Father's Gun
by Diana Lucifera
Summary: After the events of "Brother's Blood," Sam and Dean are faced with teaming up with John to hunt the Yellow-Eyed Demon, all while keeping Sam's powers a secret and dodging their dad's questions about just why things between them are so... different. (Brother's Blood 'verse)
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **Father's Gun  
**Authors: **diana_lucifera & tersichore  
**Pairing: **Dean/Sam  
**Rating: **Mature  
**Warnings:** minor character death, mentions of torture, the slowest of burns, and excessive bed-sharing  
**Summary: **After the events of "Brother's Blood," Sam and Dean are faced with teaming up with John to hunt the Yellow-Eyed Demon, all while keeping Sam's powers a secret and dodging their dad's questions about just why things between them are so... different.

* * *

John's first thought when he hears the all too familiar tone telling him he's got a new voicemail is, "Goddammit, it's Sam again."

It's just a guess, but that's the kind of day John's been having.

He's been in Chicago for a while now, playing cat and mouse with one of Yellow Eyes' lackies – its second in command, if the bitch he exorcised in Topeka can be believed. The thing's already dropped two bodies trying to set a trap for John, a pair of locked-door murders of former Lawrence residents that John, in spite of himself, has refused to get involved in.

They're at a stalemate, John moving on to his fourth motel after yet another failed attempt to draw the demon into his own trap went belly-up this morning, and he's starting to question if he's wasted all this time he could have spent looking for the Colt on a demon who might not even be worth it, might not even know the secret he's trying desperately to unravel. The answer to the question that's been haunting John for months, that keeps him up at night, makes him swear he can still hear that demon's voice from all those months ago whispering in the dark: _"It's all about the blood."_

The voicemail notification sounds again. John almost, _almost_ doesn't listen to it.

He always checks them eventually, even though only about 1 in 10 is actually worth his time. He's got to put up with the rest – Sam swearing at him, Bobby telling him off, Ellen's nagging – because occasionally there's one from Caleb or Jim with information about demon sightings and because Dean's semi-frequent status reports are important and sometimes even useful.

Even as he reaches over to click off "Airplane Blues" and dig the cell out of his truck's center console, he's already regretting it. Knows there's just going to be another one of Sam's angry rants waiting for him, calls growing more frequent and somehow even more venomous ever since Dean's close call with that taser and then again after John sent them off after a pagan god playing at being a scarecrow to shake them off his trail.

But it isn't Sam's voice he hears when he holds the phone up to his ear.

It's Dean's.

It's Dean, telling John that he and Sam are in Chicago, too, that they think they've got a lead on the thing that killed their mom, that they're going after it _tonight_.

It feels like John's heart stops.

All of this running, sending them off in the opposite direction, refusing to answer their calls, and here they are anyway, walking right into a trap set for John. Or Hell, he thinks as he makes a U-turn so tight it has the tires squealing, maybe they _are _the trap.

It wouldn't be the first time this bastard and his cronies have tried to use John's boys against him.

He's still trying to come up with the best plan of action when he pulls up outside the warehouse at 1435 West Erie. He hasn't been seeing the right signs, knows it can't be the yellow-eyed bastard himself, but even if it's the one he's been hunting, the Demon's lieutenant, it's still plenty dangerous. John never taught Sam and Dean to fight demons, not really – didn't really think there'd be much use in it, seeing as how up 'til now they've been so rare.

If that gap in their training has gotten his boys killed—

John doesn't have time to finish that thought, because one of the warehouse windows is exploding and there's a small, blonde figure plummeting through the air, landing on the cement with a thud. Sam and Dean appear at the window after a moment, a bit banged up but alive and apparently no longer in danger. They stare down at the still, mangled body spread out on the tarmac for a few moments before disappearing back inside.

John slips back into the alley as his boys stumble out of the warehouse as quickly as they can, bickering in hushed voices over who's more hurt and who should drive, tossing overloaded duffle bags into the backseat of the Impala.

They're fine. Whatever it was they went up against tonight, it was something they could handle. Maybe it had nothing to do with Yellow Eyes at all. John's never been happier to get a false lead.

He could leave without them even noticing, go back to tracking down the big fish in town, let Sam and Dean move on while he hides in the shadows just like he did in Lawrence. But it had been hard enough to do it then, and John can't shake that heart-sinking feeling that had rocketed through him after listening to Dean's message. It's been eight months since he's seen Sam, even longer since he's seen Dean, and for all he knows, this may be the last chance he has.

It's stupid and almost certainly dangerous for him to be around them – around _Sam_ – right now, but God, does he _want_ to.

He can break his own rule once, he tells himself. Just once, and just for half an hour. Then he and his boys will go their separate ways again. John won't let them get involved in his war. Not yet. Not until the time is right.

Not until he knows the truth.

* * *

The first thing Sam does when he and Dean walk in and find John in their hotel room is start throwing punches. John's really not sure why he expected this to go any different.

"Sam," he tries, blocking a particularly well-executed right hook. "Calm down, son."

Sam snarls, _actually snarls_, in response and cracks a fist into John's jaw so hard that it makes his vision spin.

It's a good hit. Sam's gotten stronger since John fought him at that gas station on the way to Louisiana. Hunting's doing him some good after all, John thinks. He's gotten faster, too, so fast that John almost takes another blow before he manages to deflect it. John's not surprised by Sam's skill or his fury, but he is surprised that he has to doge three more hits before Dean finally shoulders his way between them.

"All right, that's _enough_," he says, putting a hand on each of Sam's shoulders and gently – so much more gently than John remembers – pushing Sam backwards and away from John. "Cut it out, Holyfield."

Sam's letting out heavy breaths, face still pinched into an angry sneer.

"Dean," he grits out. "After what he—"

"We talked about this," Dean says in a lower, softer voice. "You're the one who's been pushing so hard for us to find him. I've been assumin' that wasn't just to punch his face in."

"Well, not _just_ for that," Sam grumbles after a moment, flicking his eyes up to the ceiling.

"Then take a breather," Dean tells him. "Lemme talk to him."

Sam opens his mouth to protest as Dean turns, reaches out and grasps the elbow of Dean's jacket between his thumb and forefinger, gives a little insistent tug like he's trying to get big brother to play army men, but Dean shakes it off easily, tossing a look back at his brother that John can't define. Sam's frown deepens, but he shoulders one of the duffle bags and tosses it onto one of the beds, digging through it to sort out the weapons he has stashed there.

Dean shoves his hands deep into his pockets and gives John a nod in greeting. He can't quite seem to look John in the eye.

"Hey, Dad," he says. "S'been a long time."

"Hello, son," John says, smiling softly.

It's damn good to see him, no matter what the circumstances. John hasn't forgotten those long weeks of worry from last year and how relieved he'd been to hear those words from his boy: _'I'm alive.'_

"Dad, it was a trap," Dean says, looking down at his shoes. "I didn't know. I'm sorry."

On the other side of the room, Sam snaps his shotgun closed like a threat, glowering at John from underneath his fringe.

"Yeah," John tells Dean, smile feeling more pasted on by the second, "I figured it might be. This isn't the first time it's tried something like this."

"Would've been nice to have a heads up, then," Sam interjects.

"Sammy," Dean says warningly, and Sam sets his jaw and starts unwinding the holster on one of his wrists.

John looks between the two of them, furrowing his brow.

"Listen, boys—" he starts.

But he never gets a chance to finish, because suddenly there's an unseen hand throwing him backwards with enough force that his feet leave the ground.

Crashing into the kitchenette forces the air out of his lungs, and John gasps open-mouthed as he struggles to escape the invisible hands pinning him to the counter. Dean yells out in shock and is sent flying in the opposite direction, while Sam lunges for the weapons bag and get slashed across the torso for his trouble.

The same claws that send Sam's blood splattering against the wallpaper are working on John, too. He screams as they rip furrows in his flesh, quick and shallow, taking him apart slow and painful. They're still working on Dean, throwing him back down every time he tries to stand, and John loses track of Sam completely until he hears a yell over the chaos and realizes that Sam has managed to crawl his way back to his duffle.

"Shut your eyes!" Sam yells, brandishing a flare. "These things are shadow demons! So let's turn on the light!"

The second Sam lights the flare, the creatures let go of John. He keeps his eyes pinched shut, letting Dean manhandle him out of the building. As soon as they spill out into the darkness, Sam drops the bag of weapons and is at Dean's side, hands nervously skittering across his brother's chest.

"Are you okay?" he pants out, eyes wild. "Did they—"

"I'm _fine_," Dean grumbles, pulling Sam's hand away from where he's thumbing across one of the deep gashes in his forehead. "We need to go, Sammy."

"Yeah," Sam agrees after a moment. "They'll be back once the flare goes out again."

He throws open one of the back doors of the Impala, tosses his bag in, and motions impatiently for John to follow.

John hesitates. His hunter's instincts are yelling at him to get into his truck and put as much road between him and the boys as he can. But that same small, quiet part of John that had pushed him to come to the motel in the first place is telling him that he needs to stick with his sons. They're beat to hell, vulnerable. If they don't manage to shake off those shadow demons, John isn't sure Sam and Dean can survive a third assault.

He glances as Dean but can't catch his gaze.

"Let's go!" Sam presses, eyes darting anxiously between the motel room window and John.

It's just until he's sure they're all right, John thinks. It won't have to change anything.

He gets into the car.


	2. Chapter 2

Thanks so much for the reviews, guys! We're so happy to hear that you're excited for the sequel! Here's the next chapter, as promised. If you enjoy it, please take a few seconds to leave us a note letting us know. Enjoy!

* * *

Dean's wanted to get the family back together for a long damn time now. He hates to admit it, but this isn't really going like he'd pictured.

The second they get into the motel, Dad orders Dean to get the place protected and disappears into the bathroom with a handful of supplies from the med kit. Sam, who spent the entire drive here and the time he was helping Dean set up the salt lines in a tense, tight-lipped silence, submits to his own medical treatment with only a moderate amount of bitching.

"Hurry up!" he presses, squirming impatiently while Dean puts a stitch into the gash across his lower back.

"Shuddup," Dean grumbles, smacking him across the back of the head with the hand that's not still attached to Sam's skin with a needle and dental floss, "and stop moving around."

"Come on," Sam grumbles, craning his neck to look him in the eye. "That's just a scratch, and _you_ look like your face is about to _fall off_. You can't tell me that isn't hurting you."

Dean slides the needle in again and watches Sam's face crinkle.

"Matter of fact, it stings like a sumbitch," he tells Sam's shoulder blade, "and the sooner you quit whining and let me patch you up, the sooner I can get a bandage on it and take a mountain of pain killers."

Sure enough, that stops the wiggling. Nothing keeps the kid in line quite like good, old-fashioned emotional blackmail. Dean should probably feel guiltier about that thought than he does. He's put up with Sam's mother-henning for the last eight months, even the frankly embarrassing levels he'd hit during that case with the Reaper, but there's a pecking order, dammit. The day Dean just lies back and lets his baby brother fuss over him without giving just as good back is the day Hell freezes over.

He's finished mopping Sam up in another ten minutes, and Sam takes just a moment to pull his shirt and hoodie back on before trying to pounce.

"I got it," Dean waves him off, digging a couple of butterfly bandages out of the first aid kit. "Go check on Dad, would you?"

Sam scoffs.

"Dad can take care of himself."

"So can I," Dean counters.

"Can you stitch your own forehead shut?" Sam asks, glaring. "'Cause otherwise you're gonna look like that guy from _Monster_."

Dean regards himself in the mirror. Okay, Sam's probably right on that one, although it's completely against the big brother code to admit it.

"Fine," he says, tossing the hodgepodge of gauze and bandages at Sam. "I'll go check on Dad."

He gets about a half-dozen steps before Sam steps in front of him.

"Could you stow the stoic man-pain crap?" he says sharply. "What, Dad's here, so suddenly you've gotta be Wolverine?"

Dean rolls his eyes.

"Sam—"

"You know, he doesn't appreciate that crap any more than I do," Sam presses. "It endangers his _precious_ mission."

"God, can you lay off?" Dean snaps, sidestepping him. "We've been back together for, what, an hour? Could you at least _try_ not to start shit?"

Sam looks pained.

"Well, I didn't shoot at him, so believe it or not, this is me trying. Sorry, but I'm still a little upset about the fact that _he left my brother to die_."

Dean opens his mouth to protest… something about that. He still hasn't come up with a solid counterargument to that line of thinking, and anyway, every time he tries, Sam ends up with that look like Dean just punched him in the kidneys.

"And stop deflecting," Sam adds, grabbing a handful of Dean's jacket and trying to drag him over to the bed. "You're acting like a jerk."

"Well, you're being a little bitch," Dean returns, making another move towards the bathroom.

Sam sets his jaw.

"Dad!" he says loudly. "Dean won't let me patch him up!"

Dean blanches as John swings the bathroom door open, glaring at both of them.

"Dean, let your brother clean up those injuries _now_," he barks. "Sam, stop chasing him around the damn room; you're tracking blood. It looks like a goddamn murder scene in here."

"Yes, sir," Dean says.

John shuts the door with a click, and Dean turns to shoot Sam a dirty look.

"Did you just friggin' _tattle_ on me? What are you, nine?"

Sam tosses Dean a distinctly little brotherish smirk.

"You heard the man," he says, wiggling the needle at Dean.

Awesome.

Forty-five minutes later, Dean looks like Frankenstein's sexy cousin, Dad has finally emerged from the bathroom, and Sam's mood seems to have picked up enough that Dean feels comfortable offering him pain killers instead of Midol. Dean watches Sam swallow the pills before tossing his back along with the fifth of whiskey he's been nursing since Sam started stitching. He tugs his jacket and shirt off and tosses them across the room, regarding himself in the mirror as he gives Sam's impeccable line of sutures an experimental poke.

"Just so you know, if this shit scars, I'm telling people we fought off a mountain lion."

"That's a lot less impressive that what actually happened, isn't it?" John says, looking faintly amused over the notes he's scribbling on hotel stationary.

"You didn't let me finish," Dean tells him. "There was a school bus full of kids involved. And a chainsaw."

John looks up at him and smiles for a second before it dies. He gives Dean a once-over, eyebrows furrowing, and then turns to grab something from one of their suitcases. Dean raises an eyebrow, glances over to see what Sammy's making of that and catches him spitting the pills he'd _apparently_ tongued into the fake palm tree in the corner like a goddamn alpaca.

"What the hell?" Dean mouths at him, glancing nervously at their dad's back.

"He's going to try to leave," Sam says in a whisper. "I'm not going to be stoned into complacency _again_ when he does."

"Sam, he's not going to—"

The look that Sam's giving him is just too close to pitying for Dean to sit here and take it. He stomps briskly into the bathroom, kneels at the toilet, and sticks a couple of fingers down his throat.

It does approximately jack shit.

"Oh, come on!" Dean whines, trying again with absolutely no luck.

Sam shoulders his way into the bathroom, not looking particularly surprised to find Dean with his head shoved in the commode. Dean makes a third attempt and gets nothing but a sore throat and a mouth full of spit. He frowns down at his stupid, traitor fingers.

"That whole 'no gag reflex' thing not so cool now, is it?" Sam asks smugly, squeezing out a precise line of Crest on his toothbrush. "Don't worry. I'll keep an eye on dad. You get some rest."

Dean glares at him as Sam pops the toothbrush in his mouth and starts scrubbing it along his teeth, making even the hushed 'scritch-scritch' of the bristles sound smug and self-satisfied.

Itching to wipe the snotty grin off his little brother's face, Dean tries to think of another way to toss the pills and hits on the answer with a smirk right as Sammy's eyebrow quirks.

Salt.

Dean's eyes dart to the bags at the same time as Sam's, toothbrush drooping in his mouth.

"Don't even—" he starts, only to get cut off by Dean's hip check, which would have been as brilliant as it was graceful if Sam hadn't been endowed with freakish Yeti limbs. As it is, they end up tangled in a vicious, elbow-y wresting match in the doorway before John pounds on the wall.

"Boys! Knock it off," he barks as Sam sends Dean stumbling against the tub and elbows past him to the sink to spit.

That's just as well anyway, because the tiles in the bathroom are getting cool and way too blurry for Dean to try and half-nelson anyone.

"Finally," Sam sighs, seeing Dean leaning against the bathroom wall like it's the only solid thing in the room. "You know, just once, I wish you'd take it easy after a hunt WITHOUT being stoned off your ass."

"I'm not stoned, you're just blurry," Dean insists to the bending, wavy Sams in front of him.

"Sure, Cheech, whatever you say," Sam agrees from far away, towing Dean out of the bathroom and tipping him onto the bed, and Dean means to resist, really he does, but someone's swapped out their crappy motel beds with the softest and most awesome mountain of pillows on the planet, so really, he's not rolling over. He's prioritizing.

Besides, his face _really_ hurts.

* * *

"Dean," Sam sighs, poking his brother in the side to no avail. "Move, Dean. You're taking up the whole bed… _Dean_!"

"Mmmyu're not the boss of me," Dean mumbles into his pillow, flinging and arm out and giving a lazy, insolent wiggle into the mess of hotel sheets.

"Dude, come on," Sam grumbles, mentally kicking himself for not at least getting Dean showered and out of his boots before drugging him to the gills on illicit pain meds. "You've still got your shoes on."

Dean's only response is to clumsily plant a boot in Sam's solar plexus and scrunch his face into the pillows at a more comfortable angle. Really, Sam probably deserves at least a little of this for doping his brother up to get his way, but in Sam's defense, Dean is prone to running himself ragged on the best days, and no matter how macho he played it tonight, he lost a lot of blood on top of scaling a fucking building and getting tossed across a warehouse into a fuck-ton of crates.

And then, on top of all that, their dad had to show up. Sam knows how much it had to take out of Dean to hang back like he did, to let Sam vent even a little bit of the John-centered rage he's pent up for these past eight months before stepping in and pulling them apart.

"You don't move, I'm just gonna have to sleep on top of you," Sam shrugs, unlacing the boot digging into the waistband of his jeans with a few, efficient jerks.

"Take the other bed," John orders absently, pile of hotel stationary notes in front of him rustling as he moves a seemingly arbitrary piece of paper form one stack to the next.

"Then where would you sleep, Dad?" Sam asks archly, snatching Dean's other foot from the tangle of grimy, grit-scattered sheets and making quick work of the laces. "Unless you're planning on taking off in the middle of the night. _Again_."

Sam drops Dean's boots to the floor as he turns to face his father.

"That's what you were planning to do, wasn't it?" he demands, striding to tower over John at the dinette. "Dump us here, take of as soon as we were out? Disappear for another eight months? Fuck off and screen our calls until—"

"Sammy."

Sam turns to see Dean propping himself up on the bed, bleary-eyed, but determined.

"That's enough," he enunciates, slow but steady.

"But Dean—" Sam protests, flailing an arm angrily at John, still stoic and unmoved at the table.

"He'll wait," Dean interrupts firmly, turning his hazy but focused glare at John. "Right?"

"We'll head back to the truck in the morning, plan from there," John rumbles, capping his pen in a swift, short motion and striding past Sam into the bathroom.

"Bastard," Sam mutters, shucking his hoodie and shoving at Dean's shoulder until he scoots over on the bed with a whine.

"Evil Dragon, be nice," his older brother moans into the pillow, aiming a clumsy kick at Sam's ankle.

"Faker," Sam mutters, flopping into the pillows. "I know what you sound like when you're stoned, Dean. Stop hamming it up and get some sleep."

"Don't tell me what to do, Ms. Frizzle," Dean slurs; Sam can see the corner of his mouth quirking up against the pillow. "I don't want to go on your magic school bus."

"Shut up, jackass," Sam says, trying not to grin. "And don't sleep on your stomach, you're gonna aggravate your stitches."

"Yessir," Dean replies sarcastically, trying to mock-salute and instead slapping himself lightly in the ear.

Sam is _so_ not finding this funny. At all.

To prove the point, he grabs onto Dean's shoulder and pulls, making his brother flop over onto his back with a beleaguered moan. Dean glares at him blearily before making a move to turn over again.

"Stop that," Sam grouses, grabbing at Dean again.

"Make me," Dean says with perfect clarity, because go figure, drugs or no drugs, Dean still has it in him to be a stubborn ass.

And Sam, who can never resist throwing around the fact that he outweighs his brother by a good fifteen pounds now, does just that and pins him down, careful not to put too much pressure on the massive pattern of bruises mottling Dean's torso.

"Oof," he brother exhales, warm puff of whiskey-soaked breath against Sam's chin. He blinks up at Sam, eyes crossing a little at the proximity of their faces. "Hey, get off me."

"Hey," Sam says, "don't sleep on your stitches."

"Wasn't gonna," Dean tells him, ignoring the fact that he clearly was.

Sam slides a little bit off of him, so he's half laying on the bed, right arm and leg thrown over Dean to keep him where he is. He lets his head droop onto his brother's shoulder.

It's been a long day for him, too. It's not just the fact that he's nearly as bad off as Dean, and with none of the happy-drugs to numb the pain. It's also the fact that he's been riding an intense emotional rollercoaster, running the gamut of hope, anticipation, fear and rage, and now he's left bone-tired and the only thing he feels about John's sure attempt to slip out of their grasp again is a dull, angry acceptance. They'll be having that fight when it happens, but Sam's not exactly looking forward to it. He'd rather drug himself up and collapse along with Dean, but of course, he can't. He's not going to let John Winchester abandon his brother again. This time, Sam's going to be ready for him.

He sighs, scrubbing his brow across Dean's shoulder blade.

"What'd you eat for dinner?" Dean asks after a moment, voice a deep rumble against Sam's ear.

He already knows the answer to that, Sam thinks grumpily. Of course, he's gonna ask anyway.

"Nothing."

Dean huffs disapprovingly.

"No lunch either."

"I had a salad," Sam defends.

"No," Dean slurs purposefully, eyes still closed. "I _paid_ for you to have a salad. You ate two bites before you found this case and stopped eating."

How does he remember this stuff when even Sam can't?

"Fine," Sam grumbles. "Then go to sleep, and tomorrow morning we'll go to whatever grease factory you want, and I'll let you feed me eggs and bacon until I explode. Happy?"

Dean snorts.

"Be happier if you'd just take care of yourself."

"Hypocrite," Sam accuses without any bite.

"Maybe," Dean allows.

He runs a hand over the arm Sam has splayed across his chest, which Sam realizes belatedly is the one still proudly bearing the scar from his emergency blood transfusion eight months ago. Dean gets his thumb up against it, tracing the raised skin from elbow to wrist. Sam tries to snatch his arm away, but Dean holds him tight by the wrist, opening one eye to fix Sam with a bleary look.

This is why Sam always wears long sleeves these days, throws hoodies on top of his tees even on the warmest days. It's not that he's ashamed of the scar. In fact, on the rare occasions that he actually remembers it's there, he's kind of perversely proud of it. But after he'd got the bandages off, he'd figured out pretty quick that letting Dean catch a glimpse of it leaves him maudlin and strange for hours – sometimes even days – afterwards. Sam guesses he can't blame Dean for that. It took months of watching Dean parade around in his boxers before Sam stopped getting hit with that sucker punch of paralyzing guilt every time he saw the scars from the vampire bites that still mar his brother's skin.

But whether Dean realizes it or not, he's pretty damn extreme around it, and Sam's learned to be careful. He doesn't like that Dean can't seem to see it like Sam does, as a symbol of how much Sam would do for him, and not as a reminder of some imaginary screw-up. But until Dean's guilt stops being so fresh (or maybe until he magically transforms into a different person, Sam thinks grimly), it's better to keep it covered up whenever possible.

The thing is, Sam forgets. He's got dozens of scars, and though most of them are admittedly less obvious, at the end of the day, a scar is a scar. He still pushes up his sleeves when Dean's not around, still leaves his hoodies in the car if it's too hot. He's gotten his share of stares, sure, a handful of comments; nothing bad. There was a diner parking lot in Fayetteville where a teenager had called it 'awesome' and asked him if it was from a skateboard accident ('No, biking,' Sam had told him). He'd had an old man stop him in the drug store to compare their artery removal scars and ask whether or not Sam found the local hospital to be as incompetent as he had. In a rusty, dust-encrusted gas station in rural Mississippi, he'd given the cashier a fifty and gotten a wide-eyed stare and a crumpled old pamphlet on suicide prevention along with his change.

It didn't bother him, just like it didn't bother him when, two or three months into his and Dean's little monster-killing road trip, he'd unthinkingly shoved his shirtsleeves up to his elbows in a bar and gotten a long, appraising look from the bottle-blonde Dean had been plying with booze for the last half hour.

"It must be so hard with your brother," he'd heard her simper once Sam excused himself to go to the restroom. "You know, my cousin tried to kill herself once. It can it be _such_ a burden."

And the next the Sam knew, he was frantically shoving his sleeves down while Dean stood up abruptly, gathered all of their stuff up under one arm and manhandled Sam right out of the bar with the other.

They'd driven back to the motel in uncomfortable silence, and once they'd gotten back, Dean had cracked open his own alcohol stash.

"Rather stay in tonight anyway," he'd said, pouring Sam a glass. "S'not really your scene in the first place, right?"

Sam had nursed his own drink, watching Dean put away three of his own, totally not understanding why Dean was as upset as he obviously was.

"So," Sam finally says awkwardly. "Guess you decided not to hook up with Alicia, then."

"Her name was Amber," Dean corrects, despite the fact that Sam knows for a fact it wasn't. "And no way. Not happening."

He tipped his drink back.

"Dumb bitch," Dean slurred. "What does she know?"

"It was just a mistake," Sam told him, despite the fact that he didn't really enjoy the idea of white knighting one of Dean's hook-ups. "I don't think she was trying to insult me or anything. I mean, depression's a legitimate illness. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

Dean uncapped a beer and took a swig before looking Sam over for a long moment.

"You ever felt like that, Sammy?"

"What, depressed? Hasn't everyone?" Sam deflected, reaching over to grab his own glass and take a shallow gulp.

Dean paused, drink halfway to his mouth, giving Sam an indecipherable look.

"But you wouldn't ever do that," Dean said. "I mean, kill yourself. Right?"

Sam shrugged. He was pretty sure the answer that Dean was looking for wasn't _'Only for you.__'_

"Would you?" he asked, twirling his glass to watch the ice click together.

Dean shrugged.

Sam really didn't want to think about that that meant.

"I worry," Dean says now, plain and simple, hand still trapping Sam's wrist, fingernail scratching against the edge of the scar tissue.

"I know," says Sam baldy. "Me, too."

"C'n take care of myself," Dean tells him definitively, eyelid twitching a little from the effort of keeping it open. "So quit it."

"You first," Sam whispers, smiling a little.

Yeah, right. The day Dean stops clucking over him like a butch, leather-clad mother bear will be the day Sam knows they've picked up another shifter.

"I'm tired," he says, cheating shamelessly. "Can we sleep now, please?"

"_Yeah_," Dean exhales. "Yes, finally, thank you."

Sam tries not to laugh.

"Dun punch Dad while 'm 'sleep," Dean murmurs, both eyes finally sliding shut.

"I'll do my best," Sam tells him, which sounds a lot more like a promise than it actually is.

He shuffles down on the bed, tugging the scratchy, seashell-emblazoned comforter up over them. He reaches over his brother and clicks off the lamps between the beds. He doesn't bother with the one standing beside the desk John's been working at, knowing their father's just going to turn it back on once he finally emerges from the bathroom. He flops down heavily, throwing his arm back over Dean's chest, one leg finding its way between his brother's legs to hook his ankle around Dean's own.

"Dun hafta pin me, Sammy," Dean mumbles. "M'not goin' anywhere."

"Neither am I," Sam says pointedly, flexing his wrist where Dean has – apparently unconsciously – resumed his death grip.

Dean grunts and let him go, but Sam stays where he is. This feels nice. Comforting, like when he was younger and they used to share space like it was air, back when he could snuggle up against Dean whenever he wanted without anyone accusing him of being girly or acting like a baby. His first instinct as a little kid had always been to plaster himself up against his big brother every time he was upset. He hates to admit it, but he guesses it kind of still is; he'd just learned how to hold himself back once John and, eventually, Dean started telling him to quit it. Some part of Sam has always wondered if he'd feel this same yearning for comfort from Dean if he'd grown up having a mom giving him baths and fixing his scrapes and making his lunches instead of his brother. He guesses he'll never know.

Anyway, girly or not, Sam's not moving until Dean physically makes him, and his brother's definitely not up to that task right now if the snores that are starting to thunder through his chest are any indicator. Sam rests his head against Dean's shoulder, wincing as he puts pressure on his own stitches. But the pain will keep him awake and ready, keep him from slipping too deeply into the sleep his body is so desperately craving. He's got John's bed and the door in his eye line. He'll be ready for it, when it comes.

He shifts closer into the warmth of Dean's body, lets his eyes drift closed, and waits.


	3. Chapter 3

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* * *

Morning comes, and with it, the latest edition of the Tribune, which John snatches from the bleary-eyed desk clerk along with three stale cups of coffee and a new distaste for watercolors and seahorse statuary.

After all, there's only so much a man can be expected to deal with after a shadow demon attack and unexpected family reunion pop up all in the same night.

When he checks the paper, John's not surprised that the weather reports have leveled out, that there are no fresh reports of cattle deaths or freak lightning strikes. There's no way Yellow Eye's second-in-command would have stuck around after they slipped its trap last night.

His luck's not that good.

It's back to square one, John reflects grimly as he makes his way back to the room. More sleepless nights combing through papers, hoping that _this_ sign, _this_ omen is the one that pans out, the one that finally leads him to Yellow Eyes, to answers and justice and ending this thing, once and for all.

To peace, for him and the boys.

God, his boys…

He expected that anger from Sam. The rage and betrayal that had been poured out into his voicemail time and time again. He even half-expected the violence, for Sam to throw words aside and let his fists do the talking, like they had with John so many times before, but Dean… Dean who was always there between them, keeping things from going too far? Keeping the fights, as best he could, to just words? Making sure Sam and John didn't do anything they regretted too much?

He hadn't stepped in. Not right away. Not like he used to.

And when he had, tugging Sammy aside and quieting him, talking him down from that hot, wordless fury in an instant, without even looking at John… Not even meeting his father's eye when he made his report about the warehouse…

That wasn't the Dean he knew. Wasn't the soldier he raised, or the son he sent to New Orleans.

And then there's the scars...

John knew about Dean's tangle with the vamp back in Louisiana. He knew Sam had found him in a bad way. But there's a bad way, and then there's the story Dean' s bites told, the angry, arcing half-moons that tore up and down his wrists, his neck, that marred the creases of his elbows, so thick in some places that they swallowed his son's tanned, freckled skin completely, the Dean he knew buried beneath warped, silvery scars and eight months of radio silence.

John has fuck-all for hands on experience with vampires. He'll admit to that in a second, but there's no way in hell a body just _pulls_ _through_ that kind of attack. Not the way Dean did.

Hell, John still remembers getting that voicemail from Dean a couple of days after Sam found him. He'd seen his boy's number pop up and prepared himself for the worst, for another furious message from Sam, for bad news on top of bad news. Then he'd had to sit down hard and fast on the bed of the shitty hotel room he'd found himself in for the night when he heard Dean's voice, clear and healthy as ever, checking in like nothing'd ever happened at all.

John had almost called him back. Had, in that moment, needed so_ fiercely_ to hear from his boy that it almost hurt.

But it wouldn't have been safe. Not for him, not for the boys.

He's regretting not making that call now. Now that eight months have passed, there's no way of knowing if this change between the boys, this new, strange closeness, is something old but new to John, some side effect of their hunting together for so long, or something else entirely…

Because after those bites? After being eaten on that hard for that long?

John knows field medicine. He's got more than twenty years hard experience of what a body can and can't take and after a hurt like that, Dean shouldn't be alive.

He _shouldn't_, and he _is._

And it's that and a hundred other little things that are nagging at John, that just don't seem to gel with his definition of Sam and Dean, of the sons who weren't even speaking eight months ago but are now close, too close, closer than they ever were, even as kids, and it's worrying and worth watching and all happening at the wrong damn time, because goddammit if he can't forget what that pissant lackey screamed right before John sent him to hell in a funnel of black smoke

_It's all about the blood._

* * *

When John reaches the room, the boys are still sprawled across the bed furthest from the door, blankets rumpled and limbs sticking out every which way. Dean's got a fist clenched under the pillow, hand curled around his bowie knife, and Sam's glaring blearily at John, one arm slanting across his brother's chest, like he expects…

Well, John doesn't know what Sammy expects from him. Something not good. Something so far from the truth that it has John's gut clenching and teeth grinding, because Sam should _understand_. He should _know_.

Especially now. Especially after what happened in Palo Alto.

But John doesn't say any of that. Doesn't do anything but set his shoulders and put the coffee on the battered table near the door.

"Get your brother up," Hhe tells Sam over his shoulder as he digs out his phone. "We're burnin' daylight."

If Sam has any problems with John giving him orders, he doesn't say anything, just shoots John a particularly vicious look and nudges Dean awake as he sits up and scrubs a hand across his eyes.

John ignores the insubordination as best he can, instead focusing on dialing his contact in the National Weather Service, the sound of the boys getting up fading into the background along with the dial tone in his ear.

"You get any sleep last night?" his oldest mumbles, yawning blearily as he prods the dressing on his face.

"Dean, don't poke your stitches like that," Sam clucks, batting his brother's hand away.

"That's a 'no', then. You know you can't keep this up, Sammy," Dean persists, only for Sam to ignore good advice and keep fussing at the gauze on Dean's forehead.

"Hold still. That bandage needs changing."

"Ignoring me. That's mature," Dean grumbles, dodging Sam's try at grabbing the dressing on his head to slide out of bed and stumble blindly towards coffee.

"Mornin'," he mumbles to John, who shoots him a nod as his contact finally picks up.

John frowns into his coffee as he's told exactly that he was expecting to hear. No freak lightning storms, no temperature fluctuations, no cyclones. Nothing that even remotely resembles any kind of omen, anywhere, for the last ten hours, at least.

John follows up with the local farms and gets the exact same. No crop failures. No cattle deaths.

Nothing.

He was expecting it. After all, with a busted trap and no luck finding their prey, why would Yellow Eyes' grunts stick around? Their leaving is predictable. It makes sense. It fits their pattern. It's exactly what happened all the other times they tried and failed to make a move on John when he got within reach.

Doesn't mean it doesn't piss him off.

He was _so_ _close_.

"What's the plan?" Sam grumbles when John hangs up, wincing as he tastes the coffee Dean hands him. Kid always would girly up a good cup of joe, given half the chance.

"Head back to the truck, go from there," John answers, taking a drink of his coffee, which tastes just fine to him.

"Awesome. Dibs on the shower," Dean chimes in, tossing his empty styrofoam cup in the vicinity of the bedside table and making for the bathroom.

"Dean!" Sam complains, digging the cup from where it's fallen between the bed and nightstand and making a face when he gets cold dregs on his hand.

John snorts into his own coffee as Sam mutters under his breath and strides to the trashcan near the door.

"I swear, it's like living with a giant six year old," he whines, dropping the cup into the trash. "One who likes beer and porn and IS A TOTAL PIG."

"I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I?" Dean calls from the bathroom.

John chuckles and looks up, but whatever smart remark he was about to make dies when he sees Sam's right arm, bare in front of John for the first time.

Because where before there was only smooth, tanned skin, there's something else now. Something new.

New and, from the looks of it, dating from around the time John left Sam in Louisiana.

Just before Sam got Dean back.

John can practically feel his blood run cold as he stares at the long, crooked scar stretching from Sam's wrist up the length of his arm, nearly to the elbow.

A scar from something big. Something violent.

Something supernatural.

"What did you do?!" he demands, up from the chair in a heartbeat and snatching up his son's wrist, jerking his arm closer. Seeing, not believing, not wanting to believe, because the scar is too long, to thick, too perfect to be from just any injury, just any hunt, and Dean would have called, would have told him if Sam's gun hand had been hurt this bad.

Unless...

"Ow!" Sam snaps when John's hand clenches. "What the hell, Dad?!"

"What. Happened," he grinds out, the possibilities stampeding through his head as he glares at Sam, trying to see something, anything...

"What do you think happened?" Sam challenges, eyes narrowing as his jaw sets, as his entire face clenches into furious, stubborn lines. The lines that harden and freeze his son's face, transform it from Mary's baby, her Sammy, to someone, _something_ else.

John doesn't want to know.

He doesn't, but he has to, because something has been different. Something has been different and wrong between them all ever since he first saw them yesterday, and the possibilities keep racing through John's head, keep giving him awful, horrible explanations for the scar, for their behavior, for how Dean survived after all those bites…

"What. Did. You. Do," he demands again through gritted teeth because this isn't happening. This can't be happening. This can't be happening, but it is, and there's evidence, bad, awful damning evidence as to what that something could be, right under his fingertips, a long, crooked line down his youngest son's arm.

This is happening. This is happening, and he has to do something.

"What did I do?" Sam repeats furiously as he snatches his arm back, too loud and too angry and all that's in John's head, all that he can hear, is that fucking demon, screaming and laughing and taunting him, over and over again.

_It's all about the blood._

_It's all about the blood._

_It's all about the blood._

"I did what I had to do!" Sam is shouting, clenching his fists and getting in John's face. "I did what needed to be done, Dad! I did what I had to do to save Dean! To _protect_ Dean! Because I was there! I was there for him, and you weren't! You _never _were!"

"Hey! Hey!" Dean shouts, bursting out of the bathroom with a towel clenched around his waist, shouldering between them, suds dripping as he glares between his father and brother. "What, I can't leave you two alone for ten goddamn minutes now?"

This can't be happening.

It can't be true. There has to be another explanation.

Any other explanation.

"Dean—" Sam protests, but Dean cuts him off.

"Go pack. _Now_," he orders, and Sam rolls his eyes, stomping off to throw things in his bag with his mouth pinched as Dean turns to John.

"Wh—" John begins, but Dean cuts him off, too, his face tight and shuttered.

"We're going out to breakfast," Dean announces, still not entirely meeting John's eye. "Let everyone cool down before we head out."

"Check-out's at nine," John mutters shortly, refusing to feel like he's disappointed Dean.

Dean, who spent the first two years Sam was at college not-so-subtly trying to get he and John to reconcile. Dean, who gets that rigid, hollow look in his face whenever John fights with Sam.

Dean, who might…

But John can't think about that right now. He has to focus.

Has to figure this out.

"We know what time check-out is. We're not stupid," snaps Sam as he strides past the two of them and out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

"We'll swing back by, pick you up," Dean offers, rifling through his duffle for a fresh pair of jeans.

"Don't bother," John dismisses, his mind going through the timeline, the possibilities as he gathers his notes and cellphone from the table, shoves them into his jacket. "I've got to look into something. Meet you two later."

John can see the doubt cross Dean's face, see his mouth twist, see him wanting to ask if later means a few hours or another eight months from now.

He doesn't. Doesn't cross that line into insubordination. But the thought is there.

John logs it away, files it with everything else, and walks out on his son. Sons.

And honestly, he doesn't know if he'll be back.


	4. Chapter 4

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* * *

Dean hates that he lets out a deep breath when the door slams behind John.

He hates that his fists relax and his stomach unclenches with the exhale, with the silence in the empty room. He hates it, because when did this happen? When did things become harder with Dad than without? When did it stop being about family and start being about us versus him?

Dean knows that Sammy and Dad have always been able to needle each other, to know just which buttons to push at just the right time for maximum fireworks. But even before, even the last time they were all together like this, with fresh-outta-high-school Sam antsy and secretive, growing and growling and so angry all the damn time, even then it wasn't this bad.

Dad being so cagey when they were supposed to work as a family. Sam lashing out with words and fists at every chance he got. Dad returning his barbs, word for word and blow for blow. Sammy refusing to sleep. Not letting John out of his sight. Not trusting their dad to stay, or to leave, or to... _anything_.

And Dean used to try and keep the peace, to try and make things work, but Dad— And Sam—

He just doesn't think about things the same way he used to. Ever since Louisiana. Ever since that basement... and after. And then all those months with Sammy...

He and Sam had a good thing going on. Have for a while now, and it's Sammy and him, and they hunt things. Save people.

Save each other.

And there's gotta be a way to make that work here, to just figure out how Dad can fit, how they can all be happy. Dean knows how fix things, how to make 'em work again. Outside of hunting, it's what he's best at.

He's not the same five year old holding his baby brother in a Kansas hotel room, hoping that if he was good enough, if he could keep Sammy quiet enough, maybe Dad wouldn't leave this time.

He's older now. Smarter. Scarier.

And Dean knows that, knows it like he knows Sam, and he knows how it should be.

How it is.

They're older now, and they can take care of themselves. Of each other. But that doesn't mean that Dad's out of the picture. That things can't work out somehow, he and Sammy and Dad...

It's just getting harder to take Dad's side, that's all.

Dean refuses to read anymore in to that. Refuses to examine it or probe it for deeper meaning, just gets dressed, shoves his crap into a duffle, and snags Sam's bags before blowing out of that damn motel room and straight to the Impala, where his brother is waiting with crossed arms and a sour look on his face.

Dammit, it's gonna be impossible to get him to eat after all this.

"Where the hell'd he run off to?" Sam grumbles, glaring at the pavement as he leans against the driver's side door and squints in the weak morning sun.

"Said he had to look into something, meet up with us later," Dean answers as he fishes in his pocket for the keys. "You driving?"

"'Meet up with us later,' like this morning later, or 'meet up with us later' like another eight months later?" his brother demands, not moving.

"Morning, noon, night, I don't know, Sam!" Dean whines. "It's early, I haven't eaten anything yet. Can we stop fighting and just get in the damn car already?"

Sam rolls his eyes, mouth still tight as he holds out his hands for the keys, but he shoves the box of tapes at Dean as they pull out of the parking lot, so things could be worse.

Sam stays quiet through the drive to the nearest diner, but the tension in his face softens a little by the time Dean starts singing along with "Fight the Good Fight", and by the time he's air guitaring along with the bridge, he's pretty sure Sam is working to hide a grin, so the morning isn't a total loss.

By the time they reach the diner and scrunch themselves into a cramped booth, the frustration has more or less bled out of his little brother, but he's still quiet, working through whatever's going through his too-brainy brain on his own as Dean takes advantage of his little mental vacation to order them coffees and enough greasy breakfast food to knock out a horse.

Their coffees arrive, and Dean watches as Sam accepts his from the waitress with a quiet nod of thanks, moving to dump in cream and sugar before he finally looks up and meets Dean's waiting eye.

"Are we too close?" he asks uncomfortably, hands twisted around the steaming mug in front of him.

"What, you wanna leave room for Jesus?" Dean snorts, giving Sam a light kick in the ankle where their feet are tangled beneath the table.

Sam gives him a bitchface and kicks back, and Dean sends a sugar packet spinning at his head.

"I dunno," Sam hedges, picking the sugar from his lap with a shrug and worrying it between his fingers, "Seemed to be weirding dad out, s'all."

"Yeah, I'm sure _that__'__s _what was weirding him out," Dean snorts in response, leaning back as their waitress sets their food in front of them.

"What?" Sam demands, glaring at Dean as he butters his toast.

"Dude, you spent the whole night bird-doggin' him to make sure he didn't ditch out on us," Dean laughs, forking up an egg, "You really think your definition of weird is the one we wanna go by?"

"Dean, you know what I mean!" Sam scowls, dropping the toast and crossing his arms, then making a face when butter gets on his shirt.

"Yeah. Okay, crazy."

That gets a laugh out of Sam.

"You're such an asshole," he grins, throwing half a sausage link at Dean.

Because he is awesome and has the best hunter-reflexes on Earth, Dean catches it in his mouth and chows down.

"Seriously," Dean tosses back through a mouthful of tasty, tasty pork byproduct. "He's probably just thrown off by you general delusional... ness and, let's be honest here, _rampant_ paranoia."

"Dude, you sleep with a knife under your pillow," Sam says through a bite of toast.

"Which is a smart and not at all crazy thing to do when your job is chasing after monsters that want to kill you," Dean justifies, eyeing his brother's plate critically. Sam's barely touched his food, and if this spat with Dad has him going all hunger strike again...

"Whatever," Sam dismisses as he pokes at his eggs experimentally. "Anyway, I was right. The second I left the room, Dad ditched."

"He's just making some calls or something. He'll be back," Dean won't meet Sam's eyes, but that's only because salting hashbrowns is serious business, and it requires his full concentration.

He definitely doesn't look up when Sam snorts into his coffee at the remark, because what good could possibly come of that?

He doesn't want to see that condescending, you're-hopeless-and-stupid look in Sammy's eyes, the one his little brother gets when he thinks Dean's wanting them to have a family – wanting to be around Dad at all – is completely pointless. It always cuts Dean right to the core, and it always ends in lines drawn and voices raised and hours of cold silence and simmering anger. They don't need that. It's early, and they've already had one fight today.

Dean doesn't want to be the one picking the next one.

So instead of looking up, of daring Sam to say out loud what his look implies, of being forced to argue with his baby brother about family and loyalty and all that deep, traumatizing crap, Dean shoves it down.

He eats his hashbrowns and nudges Sam's plate a little closer in the hopes that his brother might at least get one good meal in today. He focuses on the white noise of the diner, the oldies playing on the static-y radio, the sizzle of eggs on the griddle, and the feeling of Sam's knees bumping his under the table, their feet tangled up against one another again as his big, annoying little brother tries to get out of having to finish all the food on his plate, rolling his eyes and complaining and trying not to smile as Dean pokes the sausage and eggs on his plate so that they make a face.

They don't talk about how Sam doesn't trust Dad. They don't talk about Dad's freakout over Sam's arm or Dean's increasingly half-hearted defenses of their father.

But Sam eats his first real meal in two days, and they're both grinning by the time they slide out of the booth, so in the end, Dean counts breakfast as a win.

* * *

John stares down at the phone in his hand, really not looking forward to this part.

He knows he has to. This isn't a matter of pride anymore, it's a matter of safety.

His family's safety.

No matter how much he doesn't want to do this, not matter how much bitching and bickering he's going to have to put up with, he needs to know. Has to know. Not just for himself, but for all of them.

Taking a deep breath, and wishing hard that he had a shot of something to make everything go down easier, he presses 'dial' and waits.

"Yeah?"

"What did he do?" John demands as soon as the Bobby answers the phone.

"Who? And when?" the older hunter asks, sounding more confused than he has any right to.

"You know who," John grinds out, barely keeping his temper in check, barely keeping himself from jumping in the nearest car and burning rubber to Sioux Falls and beating the truth out of Bobby Singer, because if anyone outside of the boys know what happened, it's their old _"uncle"_. The same old drunk who was always there, always undermining John and spoiling the boys, always throwing his two cents in whenever and wherever it wasn't wanted.

"John," Bobby begins, and it sounds like a warning. It sounds like reason and caution and good sense, and _fuck_ that.

This is his _family_. His _son_.

He deserves to know. He has a _right_ to know.

"How did he get the damn scar, Bobby?!" John shouts into the phone, and he doesn't care anymore, he doesn't. He has to get to the bottom of this, has to understand how and why, because if what he thinks happened...

"How?" the other hunter demands, voice rising furiously. "I'll tell you how! Savin' his brother's life, that's how! That boy is a baby, John! A BABY! Never been on a solo hunt in his life, and you send his ass to New Orleans? Alone? After FAMILY? You must be outside your damn mind!"

"Singer, I didn't call you to—" John snaps back defensively, only to be interrupted by the older hunter.

"No, you called me to spy on your own damn sons!" Bobby accuses. "You wanna know what they've been doin', John? Takin' care of each other, the only way you taught them how! You're not happy with how that turned out for ya? Too damn bad!"

Bobby sounds furious and proud and superior, all at once, and it makes John's blood boil, reminds him just why he took his boys and left the old drunk in the dust all those years ago. He is their _father_, their blood, and he doesn't have to put up with this shit.

"Listen, you—"

"No, you listen to me you selfish son of a bitch!" Bobby cuts him off. "I don't know anything they wouldn't tell you, you ask the right damn questions! You're always makin' a point to tell me who their father is? Well go on, _Dad_. Talk to your damn sons."

There's the sound of a receiver being thrown in the cradle and then silence.

It's not the first time John Winchester's been on the business end of one of Bobby Singer's parting shots, but it is the first where he'd have preferred it if the old hunter had just hauled off and used a gun on him instead.

John knows that if he calls back, Bobby'll just hang up on him. He also knows that if he does make the trip to Sioux Falls, he'll come back with a few extra bullet holes but no more intel than if he turned around and tracked down Sam and Dean, followed up on this himself.

But there is someone else who might know, either by hearin' it through the grapevine or shootin' the shit with Bobby Singer. It's a long shot, and he has no right to even think about it, not with 'Winchester' bein' a four letter word in that household...

But it's worth a try.

John looks down at his phone and really, _really_ wishes he was in a bar. At least there he'd have a bottle of somethin' to maybe find his good sense at the bottom of. But as it is, he's in the middle of nowhere, Illinois with this being the lesser of two pretty goddamn unpleasant evils.

He punches in the number, grits his teeth, and listens to it ring once... twice... and then:

"Harvelle's Roadhouse."

"Ellen," John gets out, slow and heavy, but then Bill's wife is cuttin' him off like it's her business, like she's about to give him shit for givin' her a card they both know is fake to cover his tab.

Like nothing happened between him and Bill at all.

"Bobby already called me, John," Ellen says into the phone, and John can practically see her shaking her head, rollin' her eyes like she was the only one born on this earth with any sense.

"Goddammit, _how_?" John curses angrily. It's one thing if Bobby Singer takes it on himself to be the unofficial hunter's dispatch, but another entirely to be airing John's dirty laundry to Ellen Goddamn Harvelle.

"He didn't stare at the phone for twenty minutes tryin' to decide whether or not to take a shot of bourbon first," she tosses back, and dammit if John doesn't hate them both right now.

"Come on, Ellen," he bites out.

"Don't you 'Come on, Ellen," me, John Winchester," she snaps. "Why the hell do you think I know anything? Last time I met the boys Sam was in diapers and Dean couldn't even read. They probably don't even remember me, they certainly don't call to chat, and if Bobby did tell me anything, which he _didn't_, it would be none of your damn business. Have I made myself clear?"

John snaps the phone shut, ignores it's buzzing as Ellen's number flashes across the screen once, twice, then goes silent. Ellen and Bobby won't tell him, fine. He can find out himself.

John knows it means he's a weaker man, but he wanted there to be another way.

Any other way.


	5. Chapter 5

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* * *

Dean's phone rings just as they're paying for breakfast.

It's a number he doesn't recognize, and when he flashes it to Sam, his little brother shakes his head.

"Hello?" he answers, phone sandwiched between his head and shoulder as he tucks this week's scammed credit card back into his wallet.

"This ain't me picking sides," a rough, angry female voice snarls on the other end of the line. "I'm calling you 'cause your dumbass daddy don't pick up the damn phone. You tell him, he wants help on a hunt or to know how the hell I'm doin', he can call, but he want's dirt on his own kids he can goddamn go to the next page in his ever-lovin' address book! You morons talk about your damn problems, you hear?"

"Yes… ma'am?" Dean replies, very, _very _confused.

"All right," the woman sighs. "Jesus, I thought Jo and I had issues…"

"Yes, ma'am?" Dean nods, trying to catch up. Who the hell is this lady? And who the hell is Joe?

"You take care now. Tell your brother I said 'Hi.'"

"Yes, ma'am," he answer automatically, staring at the phone after a definitive 'clunk' announces the line going dead.

"What the hell was that?" Sam laughs, head cocked and amused smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

"Dude, I don't even know," Dean shakes his head, putting his phone away. "Someone dad pissed off."

Sammy snorts, makes some crack about whoever it was havin' to get in line, but Dean is trying to work out what the woman on the phone said. What she meant by John lookin' for dirt on his kids.

It's just the latest in a long line of weird and unsettling for them. There was Dad and Sammy's fight in the motel room, Dad's storming off after that, and now this pissed off mystery woman calling to yell at Dean for stuff she should have no idea is even going on.

So what? What's that supposed to mean?

Dad's brushing up on what they've been doing this past year? Calling other people in the business to check up on their work? Why? Why not just ask them? Why not just pick up the phone or, you know, stick around to talk about it?

It's too many questions this early in the morning, and he's got a feeling in his gut that whatever the answers are, he's not gonna like any of 'em.

"Where to next?" Sam asks as soon as they've crossed the diner parking lot and are back in the Impala, and of course, trust Sammy to zero in on the question Dean is pretty specifically focused on ignoring.

He's just having that kind of day.

Dean isn't looking forward to this part. Really, he isn't, because either Dad _has_ left them, which means who knows how long of tracking him down again, or Dad _hasn__'__t_ left them, which means another fun time of joy and excitement defusing the bomb that is Sam and John Winchester in the same ZIP code.

Dean grits his teeth and dials Dad on his cell. He can feel Sammy watching him, and he is not looking forward to what happens next as John's phone rings... and rings... and rings... and rings... and then tells him that John can't be reached, but if this is an emergency, to call his son, Dean.

"I knew it," Sam announces after Dean's left his stilted, awkward message. "I _knew_ it! He blew town, Dean. What did I tell you? What did I say?"

"Shaddup," Dean dismisses as he cranks his baby and pulls onto the highway. "Guy never picks up anyway. That doesn't prove anything."

"Where do you think you're going, Dean?" Sam demands. "We don't know where Dad is! We don't know where he's going or—"

"He's got an arsenal in that truck," Dean interrupts. "Gotta go back for it sooner or later. It's that or let it get towed."

"So this's what it's come to? Staking out Dad?" Sam bites out. "Trying to outmaneuver him all the damn time, just so we can stay on this hunt with him? Just so we can do our job?"

"Sammy, no one knows how to hunt this thing like Dad, you know that."

"Yeah," Sam growls, "and that's fucking frustrating because he's an unstable jerk-ass who couldn't wait twelve hours to leave us in the dust."

"Sam—"

"What the hell was that back in the motel, then? With my arm and you and- _everything_?" Sam demands. "And now he's gone, AGAIN! That scream normal to you? Even a little? Even for him?"

"No? I don't know, Sam..." Dean's trying, he is, but he doesn't know, and that's starting to get to him.

"Well, we need answers," Sam sets his jaw. "And you're right. Everything he's got is in his truck. He'll come back to it eventually."

"Sam," Dean starts as they pull up to the alley where the truck is parked.

"What, Dean? What?" Sam demands, testy and pissed and of course he is. When is he not, today?

"You know what, never mind," Dean dismisses, angry and shut down and tired of fighting with every single member of his family all the damn time.

"No, please," Sam tosses sarcastically, gesturing to the empty alley. "Not like we have anything better to do. _Share_."

"Fine," Dean bites out, because if Sammy wants to be bitchy and sarcastic and not let it go, he can work with that. "Sorry Dad was a dick to you about your fucking arm. Sorry you caught heat for something that was my fault. Sorry my screw-up caused another huge fucking fight, okay? Sorry."

"Dean..." Sam says, anger cracking, thawing in an instant to soft and fuzzy and hurt, and of course, _now_ Sam is a big, sad puppy. Of course, now that _Dean_ snaps and lets out his building frustration with their situation, it's mean and hurts people and Sammy's eyes are doing that big, hazel Sarah-McLachlan-Feed-the-Children thing.

Goddammit. Now he feels like shit.

"Forget about it," he mutters, glaring a hole in the dash.

"Dean, no. I'm sorry," Sam apologizes, and at the very least, he's dialed the dewy, sensitiveness down to five. "It's not your fault."

Dean snorts, because if Sammy was gonna lie to him, he could have at least picked a better one than that.

"Hey. I'm serious," he insists, "I didn't get a lot of sleep last night-"

Dean can't help but roll his eyes at that one, something Sam notices and bitchfaces about accordingly.

"And I may be a little... _frustrated_ about a lot of things." Sam continues; Dean squashes the urge to mutter 'premenstrual' under his breath. "Sorry I... took it out on you."

Dean waits a beat and then notices the mood in the Impala.

There is a _feeling_ now. A familiar one.

"Oh, God," he whines. "Do we have to hug now?"

"Shut up," Sam laughs, and shoves Dean in the arm. Dean goes with it, shoves back, enjoys as much as he can of this Sammy, laughing and playful, before—

"This what you boys call a stakeout?" a voice barks from just outside the driver's side window, and they both start.

Before_ that_ happens.

Dean tries not to hate the way Sam's face shutters when he sees Dad. Tries not to resent their father for putting the tight, watchful, perpetual glare on his little brother's face.

It doesn't work so well.


	6. Chapter 6

Sorry for the late update, guys! Real life just got in the way this week. Thanks for reading!

* * *

A few barked orders and a minor argument later, they end up firing up the Impala, following John in his truck to an abandoned cabin outside of town, the place sagging and skeevey even by their standards.

"Well, this settles it, Sammy," Dean remarks as they pulls up the crooked, pot hole-ridden drive. "Dad's the Unabomber."

Sam tries not to laugh as he gets out of the car, door slamming in unison with Dean's as they both look up at the battered, beaten excuse for a house poking out from a scraggly knot of woods.

"We should have known better than to laugh off all those Kaczynski frame-up conspiracy theories," Sam agrees with a grin.

"Hurry it up, boys," John barks. "Not safe to be out in the open like this!"

Sam rolls his eyes, grabbing his laptop bag and duffle, and trudges up the rocky, scrubby lawn behind Dean into the cabin, which is...

Well, it's pretty obviously abandoned, pretty obviously a long time ago.

Judging from the smell, something may or may not have died in it.

Judging from the stain Sam can see on the warped hardwood floor as he drops his bag next to Dean's on one of the cabin's two, sagging cots, _someone_ may have died in it.

But it's isolated and, according to Dad at least, safe. For now.

"How'd you find this place?" He asks.

"Needed backup digs when I was chasin' the demon in Chicago. This fit the bill," John answers, turning to Sam and Dean.

"We're gonna need to dig in, keep an eye out for wherever they're gonna pop up next," he gravels. "Sam, I need you to make a supply run. Salt, food, the works."

"I'll go with him," Dean nods, digging the keys from his jeans and making for the door, only for Dad to interrupt.

"Dean, I need you to stay here."

"What? Why?" Sam protests, because hell if he's gonna take _that_ one lying down.

"Got a lot of research in the truck, need someone to help lay it out," John grumbles, dropping his bag by the window before turning to head back out to the truck.

"I don't want to leave you alone with him," Sam hisses, stepping to Dean and getting a grip on the sleeve of his jacket.

Dean turns to shoot him an incredulous look.

"Dude, don't be paranoid," he whispers back, shaking off Sam's hold, but not moving away. "Just go, pick up whatever we need. It'll be fine. What the hell do you think is gonna happen?"

Sam can't help that his eyes dart to Dean's neck, to the smooth, arcing bite scars peeking out at the edge of his collar.

They're not as noticeable anymore now that they've faded to pale, silvery shadows on his brother's skin. From a distance, you wouldn't even know they were there, especially not with the layers they wear.

But Sam and Dean are close, up in each other's orbit as always, and as Sam looks down, not even his brother's leather jacket, flipped high against the collar of his flannel shirt, can completely hide that monster's handiwork.

"Seriously?" Dean spits out under his breath, seeing exactly where Sam's eyes go, figuring out just what's playing in his mind. "You think he's what? Got a vamp friend stashed somewhere who wants to play?"

"Dean, don't be ridiculous," Sam scoffs. "I just don't—"

"You don't what, Sammy?" Dean demands, and of course he's defensive, of course he's on Dad's side, just like always. Why wouldn't he be? The man only dropped him on his ass and left him to die.

"I don't trust him," Sam spits out, because he doesn't. Not even a little. Not for this.

He stopped trusting his father to do what was in his and Dean's best interest a long time ago, and his being in under the same roof doesn't change that one bit.

"Something happens," Sam growls, "I don't trust him not to fuck off and leave you again."

"Sam, he wasn't even there last time!" Dean groans, exasperated, and Sam doesn't care, he doesn't, because this is _important_, dammit.

"My point exactly!" Sam bursts out. "He's _never_ there, Dean, not when we need him!"

And he's not. He's never been. Not when they were little, not when they were growing. Not even now that they're grown. John's never been anything but a voice telling Sam he's not good enough, a shadow over their lives telling Sam how wrong he is, telling Dean he's always letting the family down by being anything less than the perfect soldier.

Like being John's puppet is more important than being Sam's brother.

"You're being ridiculous, Sam," Dean grits out, his mouth tight and so, so like John that it burns Sam, boils his blood in a hot, uncomfortable, desperate rush because this is Dean and he's not supposed to _be_ like this.

He's not supposed to be like him. Not now. Not ever.

"He's gonna leave, Dean, and what if we're alone when it happens?" Sam demands, control fraying because last time- last time- last time can't happen again. It can't.

"What if he splits us up and something happens and I can't get to you in time?" he presses, because Dean needs to understand, he has to understand. "Or you can't get to me? That's how he works Dean, you know that. And with us? It never seems to play out right, you know?"

He sighs, shoving a hand through his hair. And he's frustrated, can't seem to make the words fit, because how do you articulate that?

How do you put into words the awful, gut-clenching feeling of being on a job and splitting up and then suddenly the tables turn and the ground goes out from under you because he's _gone_ and the world doesn't work like that, and there's never any time, never enough lore or evidence or tracks or air in the room, because Dean is missing and might be- could be- for _real_ this time.

No shifters. No faith healers. No visions. No take backs or second chances or "Just kidding, Sammy."

Just Dean, gone.

How many times is Sam gonna have to live through that? How's Sam supposed to deal with that? To prepare for it?

He can't. Won't.

And he's not gonna set himself up for it, not gonna let Dean be set up for that by blindly following John Winchester's piss-poor plan of the week.

"I'm worried," he finishes, grimly. "I don't like being in the dark like this."

Sam knows his strengths, what he's good at. Dean's the one with the experience, the sheer man-hours on the job. Dean's the con artist, able to make anything you need to go anywhere you want with just a few hours in the Copy Jack and a can-do attitude. Dean's the soldier, the marksman, the guy you call when you need an IED made up or a bullet put into someone through the eye of a needle a mile and a half away.

But Sam?

Sam knows his strength isn't physical.

Sure, he's tall enough, and no slouch in a fight, but he's light-years better in a library, digging through data and connecting the dots, linking this death to that one to the right lore or legend that will end the case for good, that will give him and his brother what they need to slam the case shut and burn its bones. The same mind and memory that got him the grades at Stanford gets him through every lock he meets, every car he has to steal, every database he needs to get into.

And the thing is, Dean can do all that, too. He can crack a case just as easily as he can jack a door or finesse his way into any building or databank a case may call for, but he lets Sam do it. Because it's what Sam's good at.

It's what he's comfortable with, what lets him take the stress and rage and insanity that is their everyday grind and assimilate it into something manageable, something normal.

And that is why, right now, on this hunt, more than any other they've ever faced, Sam needs to know what's going on. He needs John to level with them.

And he needs his big brother to back him on that.

"Sammy, listen, it's gonna be fine," Dean gets a hand on Sam's shoulder, his voice smooth and confidant and reassuring. "You'll get us set up for supplies. Go nuts, buy nothin' but rabbit food if you want."

Sam rolls his eyes, because yeah, that'd go over great with everyone. Hell, he stocked the cooler with light beer during one case and Dean didn't let him hear the end of it for a month.

"And then we'll dig into dad's research, you'll use that freaky Stanford brain to solve the whole thing in ten minutes," his brother grins, his hand a warm, comforting weight on his shoulder, "and I can watch you and dad fight for the cot without the syph."

"Those beds are disgusting, even for us," Sam laughs quietly, bringing a hand up to cover Dean's, his thumb tracing over the edge of a scar, thin and slivery, just peeking over the top edge of Dean's wrist.

"I know, right?" Dean nods sagely, then leans in to Sam like he's gonna share some big secret. "I think I saw the one by the door moving."

Sam lets out a half-hearted grin. That joke was weak even by Dean's standards, but he's Dean and even if it was a bad joke, it breaks a little of the tension in Sam, enough that he's letting his head fall forward, bangs brushing and tangling against the gelled bristle of his brother's hair.

"You good, Sammy?" Dean asks quietly, and Sam nods, unclenching a little as he takes in Dean's warmth. The feel of their hands overlapping, the scent and shape of his brother around him chasing the demons away.

"Something the matter?" John growls, box of research thumping down on the cabin's single, rickety table.

"No, sir," Sam and Dean answer in unison stepping apart, and this time, when Dean nudges Sam towards the door with a hand on the small of his back, he goes.

But he still can't shake the feeling that something, something bad, is gonna happen.


	7. Chapter 7

Thanks for reading, guys!

* * *

True to his word, Dad sets Dean to hauling research out of the truck as soon as Sammy backs the Impala out of the drive.

There are boxes of the stuff stacked in the truck's bed beneath the cover, and after Dean and John haul them all in, John refuses to let Dean touch any of it, just sends his son to go lay down salt lines and clean weapons as he starts sifting through the crates of maps, newspaper clippings, and handwritten notation that makes up the length and breadth of his knowledge on the monster that killed Mom.

Dean tries not to feel frustrated, to question why Dad made such a big deal of him sticking around to help if all he needed was an extra pair of hands haulin' boxes. He tries really hard not to think of how much better it would have been to go with Sammy, who, for all of Dean's joking, is almost definitely gonna get reamed out by Dad, no matter what he brings back.

It doesn't ever seem really fair, because sometimes Dad doesn't give a shit what kind of beer or food you bring, as long as he has somethin' to drink and eat, but other times...

It just might have been better to have Dean along, that's all. He knows Dad better, after all. Always has. And that's not Sammy's fault, it isn't. Dean's just spent more time with the man.

And then there's Sam's visions to think about.

Dean hasn't brought it up to Sam, but he's seen the way his little brother gets when he has them. The headaches, the grabbing at himself against the pain, trying to sort out what's real and what's being forced to the front of his mind, and there's no tellin' when they'll happen. The best they've got is that they pop up in some relation to the psychic kids, the ones targeted by the demon that got Mom and Jess.

The same demon whose heels they're on right now.

Dean's worried.

He's worried that Sam'll go Miss Cleo when his big brother's not around to take care of him, and then things'll go to shit for them all, either because someone is around and decides to play good Samaritan and blow the lid off the whole thing or because...

God, Sam'd clock him one if he ever knew Dean had even _thought_ this, but dammit, he's worried, alright?

He's worried his little brother'll be driving, alone, and the pain'll hit, and he'll be hunched in on himself, tryin' to figure out what's happening in the real world and what's happening in his head and then...

Then Dean'll get a call from the state troopers and have to go identify his baby brother's body from where he's wrapped that damn car he never could drive right around a tree.

So, yeah. Dean's really worried.

He's worried the second he turns his back, this whole psychic thing is gonna turn around and bite them right on the ass.

He can't say any of this to Sammy, though. Kid's already touchy as hell about seeing things that haven't happened yet, Dean's not gonna make it worse by flappin' his trap about shit that might not even go down.

Of course, that was a hell of a lot easier to do when Dad wasn't sending Sammy off on his own for no damn reason.

And what the hell is Dean gonna do about that? Say, 'Sorry Dad, Sammy needs someone with him 'cause he might go all Psychic Friends in the middle of the freeway?'

Yeah. That'd go over great.

They haven't said anything about the visions to John. To anyone. It's too dangerous. Too risky for _anyone_, especially a hunter, and especially a hunter like Dad, who won't stand questions once he's made a decision, who might-

Well. It's just better he doesn't know, for now.

"You all right over there?" Dad asks, looking up from where he's moved from sorting research to tacking papers to the wall of the cabin in an order that must have some logic to him but looks random as hell to Dean.

"Yeah," Dean answers, more to the shotgun barrel he's cleaning than anyone else. "Cleaning guns. Same old, same old."

"Been meaning to ask," John starts, and Dean hates that he notices how too-casual his voice is, how wrong the forced lightness sounds coming from his dad. "What happened to Sammy's arm? Looked pretty bad, last I saw."

"It's a... kind of a long story," Dean stalls, and he can see his dad note the pause, 'cause he's a good hunter, dammit, and he knows an interrogation when he hears it and he hates so much being on the business end of the same stone-wall look John shoots a suspect before he busts them for being a witch or hoodoo baddie or something else evil.

Something else to be hunted.

"I got time," is John's only response, and Dean knows he doesn't have a choice here, really, he doesn't. So he starts, slow at first, to be sure that it's the right parts of the story getting out, to be sure that John knows that there's nothing to be suspicious of. No one but Dean who needs to be in hot water over this one.

"It was my fault," Dean sighs, putting down the gun he's cleaning and setting his elbows on his knees, cleaning the gun oil from his hands with a rag. "When Sammy found me in Louisiana, I was in bad shape. Real bad."

Dean has to scrub a hand over his face. Even now, the memories of Sam's face strung out on fear and exhaustion on the other side of those bars... The sound of that damn vampire throwing his baby brother around like a rag doll, kicking the life out of him while Dean watched, weak and trapped and useless...

Even now, it's a lot.

He has to start again, from another point in the story, and it doesn't mean he's weak, dammit, it's just that there's background here, stuff Dad needs to understand.

"You remember that case with the pagans, back when Sammy and I were kids? You made us brush up on field medicine for a few weeks after?" Dean asks, continuing at John's nod. "Well, Sammy remembered it all. Used it to give me a transfusion after."

God, he can still remember that hotel room, rank with blood and fear, Sammy torn up and fraying at the edges as he jolts awake every ten minutes to check on Dean.

He never should have had to do that. He never should have had to do any of it.

"You watched him do it?" John probes, sitting on the cot across from Dean, wall of research abandoned.

"No," Dean shakes his head, "I was out, woke up a while after with Nurse Ratched checkin' my vitals."

"Do you remember it at all? Sam getting to you, anything after?"

Like he could forget the sound of Sammy taking that vamp apart with a fucking shovel. Dean's pretty sure that first sharp, metallic scrape, the grind of bone and spurt of blood, shooting clear from the vamp's neck to splash across his little brother's face as his Sammy, the kid he practically raised, hacked the thing apart with a ferocity, a rage, Dean had never seen in him before is gonna stay with him the rest of his life.

On the inside, Dean shivers. Outwardly though, he just shrugs.

"I remember Sam killin' the thing, carryin' me out, but then I start to lose it," Dean mutters, not meeting his father's eye. "Everything else until I woke up is pretty much a wash."

He remembers Sam hauling him out of the cage. Dragging him out of that basement. Remembers burying himself in Sammy and just letting go, because his brother was here and the thing was dead and he could, finally.

"That's all you've got?" Dad demands, a little expectantly. A little like Dean's let him down somehow.

"Yeah," Dean nods, and he tries to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, tries to keep the frustration, the disappointment, the...anger at having his father reduce the nightmare he lived through in that basement, the hell that tore Sammy up from the inside out, that brought them both closer to the brink than they'd ever been before, to a dismal 'That's all?'

"Sorry. I wasn't in the best shape at the time," Dean bites out, standing. "You need me in here, or can I hit the head?"

John dismisses him, goes back to brooding and papering the wall of the cabin with notes.

Dean doesn't slam the bathroom door behind him, but he wants to.

He takes a deep breath, runs the faucet, and splashes some water on his face, shoving down a hundred different feelings he's too fucked-up to name, feelings that just keep surging back with every sharp, brisk rustle of John setting back to work in the main room, hot and heady and so, so hard to ignore in the hollow, heavy vacuum of the cabin.

He can hear everything, feel everything, the muffled thump of shifted crates and the absent give and take of a draft pushing in, out and around and through the cracks and chinks in the cabin's dilapidated walls, and it's just Dean and John and the air, thick to bursting with everything they won't say, can't say, aren't saying about Sam and Dean and what did happen, what didn't, what Dad does think or doesn't, and it's all so old and so new and so, so much easier to fucking handle with his brother there, razor-sharp wit cutting right to the heart of the tension, slicing through bullshit silences with bloody, uncompromising directness, and it's not like Dean agrees with just taking the safety off and coming after Dad for stuff like that, but it's just- it's different, facing it alone.

It's different, having this new Dad, this Dad that looks at them like he's trying to make the pieces fit, the case add up, staring down the barrel at him.

And it's not like Dean blames him, not like he doesn't know that he screwed up, big time, getting snatched and having to drag them both in to come after him, going to pieces and letting it get so bad his little brother had to maim himself to keep his sorry ass alive. That's on him, and he owns it.

But having Dad look at him like he's on trial every goddamn minute? Stuck in this one goddamn room with nothing but all this shit that neither of them is fucking saying? The gavel up, always a beat from coming down on him? No rest, no reprieve, no break or room to breathe, just guilt and glares and-

And it's just easier to handle with someone else there, that's all.

The sooner Sammy gets back, the better.

For a lot of reasons.

* * *

Eventually, Sam does return from his supply run, crossing the salt lines to slam food and hunting supplies into cabinets with equal disdain after he makes sure to leave a container of salt and a bag of takeout placed perfectly, infuriatingly, exactly on top of Dad's most frequently consulted pile of paper scraps.

How he managed to figure out which pile that would be in the time it took for him to open the door and walk to the table will remain a mystery.

Dean snags his and Sammy's food from the bag while John's got his back turned building his wall of research. If his dad tosses the stuff because it's in his way, that's his choice, but Dean's starving and Sam skips enough meals as it is.

"Have fun with Dad?" Sam asks lightly, making a beeline for Dean when he's finished stuffing supplies into the cabin's peeling cabinets, nudging at him until he passes over Sam's food.

"Yeah," Dean nods, avoiding Sam's eye as he shoves his and Sam's bags to the floor before plopping onto the cot and unwrapping his burger. "It was lollipops and unicorns. Did you get extra onions?"

"No, I didn't." Sam grabs them sodas and shoves at Dean until he scoots over, flopping down next to him and unwrapping his own sandwich. "Your burger breath is bad enough without doubling your onion intake, Dean."

"I smell amazing!" Dean protests through a mouthful of fry, trying and failing to ignore how he's crammed on a rusted out army surplus cot, Sam's elbows jamming into every bruised rib he's got, too-big little brother fighting with the cot springs over who gets to be a bigger pain in his ass as his burger gets colder by the minute, and feeling better, lighter, than he has in hours.

"Yeah, you're a picture of grace and charm," Sam snorts, popping the cap on one of the drinks before passing it over to Dean and looking up to where their dad continues to paper the wall with his notes.

"He been like that the whole time?" he asks quietly, solemn watchfulness seeping in and swallowing the laughter in his eyes as he takes another bite of the burger.

"Pretty much," Dean nods after a swig of Coke, wincing and throwing a glare at Sam when he realizes it's diet.

Sam gives him an 'If you won't mind your sugar intake I will' shrug and takes another bite of his sandwich, not quite able to hide the smug smile at the corner of his mouth.

"Bitch," Dean mutters, throwing a fry at his pain-in-the-ass little brother's head.

"Jerk," Sam tosses back, snagging the fry and grinning as he chomps into it, taking a drink of Dean's soda to wash it down.

"You little—" Dean starts, only to be cut off.

"Boys, keep it down! I'm tryin' to work here!" John barks, pacing to the icebox to snatch up a beer. Sam and Dean freeze on instinct, years of reflex kicking in in an instant.

The rest of lunch is uncomfortable. The silence only broken by the rustling of paper and the near-silent popping of carbonation.

When John is finished laying out his research, he gestures Sam and Dean over to the wall he's papered in notes, maps, graphs, pictures, and newspaper clippings.

"This is everything I've got on the demon," John gravels. "When it's appeared, where, how, everything. As best I can tell, whenever he pops up there are omens. Cyclones, cattle deaths, crop failures, freak weather patterns. The omens aren't concrete, but everywhere this thing has been, they are, too."

"Lawrence?" Sam asks, his voice quiet, intense, and their dad nods.

"And Palo Alto," John adds gruffly. "Sam, I never got a chance before- I'm sorry about your girlfriend."

Dean remembers Jessica, all warm smiles and chocolate chip cookies and curly blonde hair, sweet and fresh and perfect for Sammy. Soft and welcoming and easing the silent, invisible weight off Sam's shoulders, just for a little.

She didn't deserve to die. Didn't deserve to become just another casualty in their family's war.

He can't help but draw closer to Sammy, get a hand on his back, and he relaxes as he feels a little of the tension bleed from Sam in return as his brother leans into the contact.

"Yeah," Sam mumbles, his head ducking, and then, stronger. "Yeah. So, omens?"

"Omens," John nods, moving to a map in the center of the wall, with red x's spattered over it. "Now for years there was nothing, and then, about eight months ago, they started popping up everywhere. It's the demon. It's active again."

"What's it want?" Dean demands, eyes skimming over the research, trying to make sense of it, to draw answers out of the chaos, but it's no use. It's not like the journal, facts and figures and lore in a jumble, but one that could be picked through, deciphered.

This... this is printouts and newspaper articles and pages ripped from books and maps, all with words or pictures circled, scribbled over, with random x's, the occasional two or three word note, but no real clue as to their meaning, their significance.

And here and there it's peppered with drawings, sheets of hotel stationary with John's handwriting, and envelopes with names or addresses scrawled on the back.

It's all fragmented and cryptic and Dean'd bet his favorite gun that only Dad knows what it all means... but he'd throw Sammy's in the mix if his little brother can't figure out the broad strokes in an afternoon.

"I haven't figured out its endgame yet," his dad grumbles, "and every time I've closed it on it, it's slipped away from me. What we're looking at here is big, boys. It's not just the one demon. He's got soldiers, lieutenants. I was closing in on its second-in-command in Chicago when I got your call."

"So you losing it was our fault," Dean mutters, ignoring his little brother's scoff beside him.

"Dean, it was a trap from the beginning," Sam dismisses. "We all fell for it, even Dad."

John shoots Sam something perilously close to a glare but nods, starting again: "What's important here is that we find the demon and kill it."

"Kill it?" Sam asks, eyebrows raised. "I thought that was impossible. That you could only exorcise demons."

"Well, I'm working on that. There's legend of a gun," John begins. "Made by—"

"Do you have it?" Sam demands, cutting Dad off.

"What?" John sputters, taken off guard by Sammy's interruption.

"Do you have this magic gun?" Sam repeats slowly and clearly, like he was talking to someone either slightly deaf or deeply stupid.

Dean has an idea of which one Sammy's thinking of here, and that attitude isn't exactly gonna make any of this go smooth for any of them.

"No," John grits out tightly, glaring at Dean's brother.

"So, what?" Sammy demands. "You've been hunting this thing to kill it without actually having a way to kill it? What happens if you find the thing, Dad? What the fuck use is this magic gun you _don't have_ if you're hunting the demon _now_?!"

"Sammy," Dean warns, and John's glare shoots to him like this whole damn outburst is his fault which, what the actual fuck?

"No, Dean," Sam says, shaking his head, "I wanna know what Dad's plan here was. You gonna ask it for a 'Time Out' to go scratch up something that can do the job, Dad? Gonna hope that it's nice and sportsmanlike, instead of DISAPPEARING FOR ANOTHER TWENTY-TWO YEARS? _Goddammit_, am I the only one in this family with _critical thinking skills_?"

"Hey!" Dean pipes up. Sure, maybe he's not Stanford material, but his critical thinking skills are just fine, thank you.

"Sorry, Dean," Sam apologizes shortly, not looking away from his glaring match with John.

"Sammy," John grits out, only for Sam to cut him off again.

"You know what?" Sam spits out. "Old plan's out. New plan: We research the gun, _find it_, and _then_ go hunting demons."

He looks between Dean and John. Their dad's stare is boring a hole through Sam, a million shades of anger flaring across his face, and for a second Dean thinks he's gonna have to get between them again, but Sam breaks the silence.

"That cool with everyone?" he demands hotly, snatching up a stack of demonology texts and throwing himself into a chair. "Great. Let's get started."

John's mouth curls, and Dean moves to intercept the punch his dad telegraphs, to get between his baby brother and their father, but John just snatches up the keys to the truck from their resting place on the table, turning on his heel and storming out of the cabin without a word.

A heartbeat later, Dean hears the truck revving, the crunch of tires on the gravel drive.

"Good riddance," Sam grumbles, flipping a page angrily from his seat at the table.

Well, Dean thinks, that went _awesome_.


	8. Chapter 8

Hours pass. Night falls. Dinner comes and goes, and John has yet to reappear.

Sam doesn't care.

Really, he doesn't. He's gotten some good research done in the intervening time, and no one's ragged on him for abandoning his family or shot Dean down for not living up to John's impossible standards, so really, Sam's good.

Dean on the other hand...

Sam's not stupid. He's not dense, and he's not oblivious. He sees the glances his brother keeps shooting to the door, the uncomfortable edge their silence has held ever since Sam tore John a new one for possessing absolutely zero planning skills.

He doesn't care. John is an ass, and Dean can just get over it. And stop pretending to reading the Orlov text. If Sam keeps going at the pace he's going, he's gonna need it before Dean gets to the title page.

"Any luck on the gun?" Dean asks, looking up to see Sam scrutinizing him.

"Nada," Sam shrugs, flipping _A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels and other Subversive Spirits_ closed and snatching up Dad's battered copy of _Summa Theologica_ with a sigh. "I'm starting to think it _is_ a myth."

"We got a plan B?" Dean asks, letting his book fall shut and picking up a new one before cocking an eyebrow at Sam.

"This book mentions a 'Kurdish demon-killing knife,'" Sam reads skeptically, doubtful look on his face as he reads what exactly that means.

"That sounds good," Dean nods, gesturing for Sam to go on. "Where do we get one a' those? Kurdia?"

"It's Kurdistan, Dean," Sam says, giving Dean a glare before turning back to the book, "and I'm afraid it's not gonna be that easy."

"How bad we talkin'?" Dean asks, leaning forward with his elbow planted right in the middle of an eighteenth century religious pamphlet that they can't exactly walk into the nearest Barnes and Noble to replace.

Then again, considering Dad's likely used it as a coaster at some point, it's probably not the worst abuse the thing's seen.

"This book says they're made to order," Sam reads in a matter-of-fact voice, "in a holy grove, on the equinox of a day and year divisible by the number eleven, by anointing a blade forged in dragon fire with the blood of a thousand infants poured from the skull of a Knight of Hell."

He's not entirely proud of the ironic tone that creeps into his voice, but it serves its purpose as he drops his book on the table and watches as Dean widens his eyes and makes a face.

"…Yeah, well, this book says that's dumb, and we're not doing that," he smarms, poking a finger in his recently abandoned elbow rest.

"_Dean_," Sam says, in his best I-Might-Be-Younger-But-One-Of-Us-Has-To-Be-The-Mature-One-Here voice. It sounds a lot like his Dean-You're-An-Idiot tone.

"It totally does, dude," Dean shrugs, holding his hands up and half-trying to suppress a grin.

"Really?" Sam asks sarcastically, then makes a grab for the pamphlet. "Let me see."

"It says I'm not allowed to show you," Dean tosses back quickly, snatching the thin book out of Sam's reach with an older brother's practice and efficiency.

"No, it does not!" Sam protests, getting up from his chair to grab at the pages.

"Yep, says it right here," Dean nods, grinning, pointing to a random page as he rises from his chair and eludes his little brother, "'…and never, ever show to Sam'."

"Gimme the book, Dean," Sam whines, hating how much he sounds like a chubby twelve year old stymied by his infuriatingly tall brother holding his English assignment out of reach. "I need it for research!"

"Come and get it, Sammy," Dean taunts, taking a step back and holding the book high.

Well, Dean may still be older, but he stopped being the taller one a long time ago, Sam thinks, darting after his brother to make a grab for the book. Of course, he remembers as he grabs and gets nothing but air, Dean's a quick bastard when he wants to be, despite all the double bacon cheeseburgers he wolfs down.

"I'm serious," Sam complains, as Dean ducks another one of his grabs. "We've got research to do."

"What's wrong, little brother, can't—" he laughs, only to be cut off by Sam's tackle, both of them landing in a tangle of plaid and flailing limbs on one of the cots, the rusty springs protesting.

"Ha! Gotcha!" Sam shouts triumphantly.

He snatches the text from Dean's hand as he shimmies to straddle his brother's solar plexus.

"You're getting slower in your old age, Dean," he teases, leaning down and flicking the crumpled pamphlet at Dean's nose until his brother smacks him away, rolling his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbles, shoving at Sam's stomach. "Move your ass, Sasquatch. I'm running out of air here."

"Sorry, dude," Sam says, sitting back and opening the book in his hands, still perched on top of Dean. "Gotta do research. Very important hunter reading. You understand."

"I understand I'm gonna kick your ass, you don't move your stupid giant butt off me!" his big brother grumbles, doing his best to throw Sam off.

"Wait, Dean, what's that?" Sam asks, absently deflecting his brother's blows as he cocks his head, listening to the faint, persistent buzzing.

"The sound of my fist about to meet your face!" Dean grunts, but Sam just rolls his eyes and looks around them, spotting what he's looking for on the floor next to the cot.

Of course, the second he leans to scoop the buzzing cell phone from the floor and flip it open, Dean takes advantage of his distraction, shoving Sam in the ribs and sending him tumbling to the floor.

"Dean's phone," Sam wheezes into the receiver once he more or less rights himself, aiming a halfhearted smack at his brother on the bed as he tries not to choke on the assorted dust and disgusting detritus sent spiraling into the air by his fall.

"What the hell is goin' on over there?" Bobby asks, voice faint under the sounds of Sam's coughing and Dean's demands that Sam give his phone back.

"Sorry, Bobby," Sam coughs, planting a hand in Dean's face, the tips of his fingers catching in the gelled spikes of Dean's hair, and lightly shoving him back onto the bed as Sam stands up.

"Dude, speaker," Dean says, jerking his head at the phone as he elbows up on the bed. "He could probably help."

Sam clicks the button and shoves Dean's legs to the side so he can sit.

"What the hell have you two chuckleheads got yourselves into now?" Bobby demands, and Dean snags Sam's wrist, drags the phone closer to himself.

"We need a way to kill a demon, Bobby," he starts. "The one that killed our mom."

"Your daddy got anything to do with this?" the older hunter grumbles evenly, but Sam can hear books rustling in the background. Even if it means working with John again, Bobby is apparently on the case.

"He _did_," Dean nods, shooting Sam a _look_, "but he stormed out around lunchtime. Haven't heard from him since."

'What?' Sam mouths, holding his hands up, but Dean just rolls his eyes, goes back to the phone.

"He mentioned a gun, Bobby. Some sort of legendary, demon-killing gun," he recounts. "You got any lore on that?"

"On a magic demon gun?" Bobby asks skeptically. "Well, crazy as it sounds, I've heard a thing or two. Ya'll aren't actually goin' after it, are ya?"

"It beats going after the demon with no way to take it out, which _was_ the plan," Sam snaps.

"Of all the dumbass—" Bobby begins, only to stop himself. "Wait, wait. Lemme guess: John's idea?"

"Bingo," Sam bites out. "So, what have you got on the gun for us, Bobby?"

"Long time ago," the older hunter starts as Sam and Dean both lean close to the phone, "your daddy was learning all he could about huntin' from a man by the name of Elkins."

Sam's brow quirks, trying to remember where he's heard that name before.

Elkins… Elkins…

"Elkins as in _vampire hunting_ Elkins?" Sam demands, suddenly remembering the name from Louisiana, from a basement with his brother in a cage and a bloodsucking psychopath dangling his brother's suffering in front of Sam like meat on a hook.

"That's the one," Bobby confirms. "Been in the game since I was poppin' zits and sweatin' over askin' Susie Martin to the Spring Dance. Taught your daddy everything he knows, up to and includin' the story of the gun."

"Yeah, what's the story behind this thing, anyway?" Dean breaks in. "It shoot tanks made of napalm or somethin'?"

"It's a revolver," Bobby begins, "made over a hundred and fifty years ago by Samuel Colt himself. I don't know how, but that gun can kill anything. Lore says that Colt made thirteen bullets for the gun, gave it to a hunter who didn't use more than a couple before he dropped off the map and the gun with him."

Bobby pauses, considering, then says, "If you boys are lookin' to kill a demon, I reckon that gun's gonna be your best bet. And if anyone's got an idea where it might be, it's gonna be Elkins."

"Great," Dean nods. "You shoot us Elkins' number, we'll dial him up, get everything we need to know on the gun."

"It's not quite that easy, Dean," Bobby rumbles, and Sam can hear books thumping in the background, the rustle of pages and papers as the older hunter digs for something. "Elkins was a paranoid bastard, even by hunter standards. He's worse at pickin' up a phone than your daddy, and ain't nobody knows where he's holed up since he retired."

"He retired?" Sam asks, surprised. He can't think of a hunter that retired… _ever_. It's just not done, at least not in his experience.

"He was a vampire hunter who ran outta vampires," Bobby answers, and Sam can hear the shrug in his voice. "Got convinced they were biding their time, waiting for the right time to strike and went underground."

"Went underground where?" Dean chimes in.

"No clue. I'd say ask your daddy, but from what I hear, he and John had a fallin' out ages ago, way before Elkins went off the grid."

"So, we're screwed then," Dean finishes, mouth twisting, and Sam is inclined to agree. He knows better than anyone that it's not easy finding a hunter that doesn't want to be found.

"Maybe not," Bobby counters, speculation in his voice. "I know another hunter, trained under Elkins. Kept in touch, name of Bill Harvelle. Friend of your daddy's, actually."

"Can we talk to him?" Sam asks. "Maybe he knows about this gun."

If he's sociable enough to keep in touch with someone as paranoid as Elkins, maybe this guy would actually answer a phone, saving Sam and Dean hours or maybe even days of driving and tracking him down.

"At the very least, he could help us get in touch with Elkins," Sam reasons aloud, his mind already racing with the possibilities, the calculations, the timelines for if they get an address versus if they get a lead on the actual gun, until Bobby pipes up and breaks Sam's train of thought.

"That'd be quite the accomplishment, considering he's dead," Bobby tosses out in a sarcastic monotone. "Got taken out on a hunt, 'bout 10 years back. Wife's still around, though, might be you ask nicely, she'll give you a peek at his journal. She runs a hunter's bar up in Nebraska."

"A hunter's _bar_?" Dean repeats skeptically, and Sam's gotta agree with him on this one.

"Exactly what it sounds like, kid," Bobby confirms, but even Sam can hear the smile in his voice.

"Great. What's next, a bowling league?" Dean quips, passing the phone to Sam and mouthing 'Hunter's bar?' to himself over and over again.

"So, Bobby," Sam continues, stifling a laugh at Dean's antics, "is there a number or..."

"This is one call you're gonna have to make in person, Sam," the older hunter shoots back. "Take it from someone who knows, Ellen Harvelle is a hell of a woman and not one to take Bill's death lightly."

Sam jots down an address off a county road in Nebraska, and as he and Dean are saying their goodbyes to Bobby, promising to look out for each other (a given) and to call more often (something they should do, really. Bobby's been good to them.) Sam's mind is already at the roadmap in the dash, calculating how long it'll take them to get from here to Ellen Harvelle's if they leave tonight.

Dean, for his part, is quiet, following him like a shadow out to the Impala and standing at the open passenger door as Sam pulls the map out of the glove compartment, spreads it across his lap, and does the math in his head in a blur, squinting in the dim light of the moon overhead.

"We leave tonight, we could make it to Ellen Harvelle's by morning," he says excitedly to Dean, folding the map and stuffing it back into the glove compartment.

"So you wanna split, head off to Nebraska after this guy Harvelle's broad?" Dean asks, and the tone in his voice has Sam looking up, searching his brother's face in the dark. "What if Dad doesn't go for it?"

"Fuck him then," Sam answers with an easy shrug.

"Sammy," Dean warns, and why does Sam need a warning? It's been nothing but fighting and bitching and bad ideas since they got together. And why do they need him for this anyway? Why? Why do they need his company or his permission or his- his _anything?_

They're fine on their own. Just fine.

"What?" Sam demands, shooting up from the passenger seat, latching on to this. "We've got his notes, research, everything. Aside from the fact that he's our father, what's keeping us here, Dean? What?"

"You don't think he's gonna, um, _notice his research is missing_?" Dean asks sarcastically, and Sam can't help but snort in derision.

"What?" Dean demands, back up and mouth tight, and Sam can't believe he's getting pissed about this. He doesn't even know what Sam _did_ yet.

"You guys really need to join us in the 21st century," Sam shakes his head, digging his cellphone from his pocket and holding it up with an impatient shake, tapping the camera imbedded in the back with one irritated finger.

"Seriously, Sam?" Dean spits out, incredulous. "When? And _why_? Are you _that_ paranoid he's gonna rabbit on us?"

"While you were getting dinner," Sam grumbles, "and yes, I am. It's not like he's got a spotless track record when it comes to that shit. He's not even here now!"

Sam is not feeling guilty about this. He's _not_. It makes sense, especially considering how often John's bailed on them in the past. He had the opportunity, and he did it. As insurance. And reference.

"For the last time, Sam, he'll be back!" Dean throws his hands in the air. "He'll be back, and we'll go after this thing together."

"It's not a 'thing,' it's research, Dean," Sam counters. "Something I've been doing on my own since I was nine! Dad'll be fine. He's got his wall of crazy to look over and a bottle of Jack to babysit. He doesn't need us, and we don't need him."

"Well, you don't need me," Dean retorts. "You gonna ditch me here, too?"

"Dean, that's not what I meant," Sam deflates, reaching out to his brother on instinct because this isn't— He wouldn't— He would never, _ever_— "You know that's not what I meant."

Dean rolls his eyes, glaring into the distance over the top of the Impala, but he lets Sam catch hold of his sleeve anyway. Pushes out a harsh, heavy breath, but doesn't push him away.

"I'm not talking about forever, here," Sam offers, quiet but insistent, because this—

God, how does this keep getting away from him? How did this go from "Let's follow a lead," to some big fucked up family abandonment drama? How does everything keep spiraling into this big, dramatic other _thing_? This is supposed to be looking for the goddamn gun, not Dean and Dad and King Solomon's goddamn baby!

"It's just following a lead, Dean," Sam tries again, pushing out a harsh breath. "Dad said himself we were just hunkering down here waiting for something to happen. Is there going to be any _better_ time?"

Dean's looking at Sam now, eyes green and impenetrable.

"Come on, man," Sam presses. "I don't want to…"

He cuts himself off with a frustrated huff.

He doesn't know quite how he was going to finish that sentence. How he was going to find words that weren't too whiny or needy or crazy to get across the sharp, sudden pull in the pit of his stomach at the thought of going without Dean. Dean going without _him_. Not having that continuous, constant comfort of bad jokes and battered leather, onion breath and oldies and having his whole world right there in the driver's seat, singing along off-key and shooting him that come-on-Sammy grin that always managed to set things right, no matter how off kilter they'd gotten.

And horribly, awfully, unthinkably, before Sam can find the words or make sense of the sharp, sudden panic that sweeps through him, Dean tugs free.

"I'll call and ask Dad," he grumbles.

Sam watches his brother trudge back to the cabin, hands shoved deep in his pockets, shoulders slumped and tells himself that he doesn't feel guilty. That winning doesn't feel like losing, like cutting into Dean and rubbing salt in the wound.

_He's_ right. _This_ is right.

Even if making his brother do it feels wrong.

* * *

Dean snatches up his phone from the dirty mattress, scrolling through until he's got Dad's name highlighted. He frowns, thumb hovering over the call button.

Sam probably thinks Dean doesn't get why he's trying to pull a midnight escape instead of waiting an extra few hours for Dad to get back, but really? Dean gets it.

Wishes like hell he didn't, but yeah. He gets it.

'Cause best case scenario? Dad comes home drunk, and they spend tomorrow driving to Nebraska with him and his hangover riding shotgun. And then Sam and Dad will end up needling each other even more than usual, and Dean'll probably have to stop the car and make Sam run laps along the shoulder of the road to blow off steam while Dad gets friendly with Jim Beam and makes smart remarks about Sam's hair trigger temper from the passenger seat, and doesn't _that_ sound like a fun family road trip?

Worst case, Dad just throws the whole idea right out, tells Sam the lead he's so excited about is horse shit, and Dean has to watch Sam's face crumple up with disappointment and shame, and dammit, Dean would rather chase down a hundred bad leads than watch that.

And it's more than just Sam needing a break from the tension between him and Dad. Dean knows that look his brother gets when he's got something to prove. Maybe even Sam doesn't know whether he wants to show Dad up or earn his respect or get his approval – Dean's been down that road enough times to know how it all gets tangled up together – but Sam's pushing for it all the same.

Sam would probably rather be ripped apart by werewolves than admit to wanting _anything_ from their dad, but Dean knows that look of masked pain Sam gets in his eyes when he talks about the night Dad told him not to come home again and he knows now that Sam thinks Dad's always been disappointed in him. Which is just fucking nuts, because Sam can ID any ugly son of a bitch the hunt throws at them, can decode a dozen dead languages and get a knife in a monster's eye from twenty feet away, balances out all that brutality with a gentleness that puts even the most defensive witnesses at ease, and would crawl over broken goddamn glass to save Dean's sorry ass any day of the week. Who in their right mind could ever be disappointed in _Sam_?

But Sam's sure it's true, and with the way he and Dad are always going for the jugular, Dean guesses he can't blame the kid for thinking it, even if he's incredibly, stupidly wrong. Won't listen to Dean when he says that, though. Won't hear anything good about Dad since what happened in Louisiana, and well... Maybe he can't blame Sam for that, either.

Dean frowns deeper, presses _Call_, and holds the phone up to his ear.

Right to voicemail.

Dean's not going to even pretend to be surprised. He hangs up, shoves the phone into his pocket, and presses a palm to his face.

He thinks about having to bring Sam inside, about sitting on one of the sagging, syphilitic beds and waiting to see when Dad will come home, how drunk he'll be, how angry. Thinks about the arguments and the suspicious, accusing glances, the way Dean still can't make himself look Dad in the face. In the back of his mind, there's an unwelcome memory of Sam, brainwashed and bleeding, saying: _"You__'__re like a kicked dog."_

Dean snatches up a pen from Dad's research pile, digs a crumpled gas receipt from his pocket, and quickly scribbles out a message:

_Lead on the gun. Going to Ellen Harvelle__'__s. Be back ASAP. _

He tosses it on to the table, shoves his .45 into the back of his jeans, and strides out of the cabin before he can change his mind.

Sam's waiting exactly where Dean left him, eyebrows raised in question. Dean gets into the car without a word and shoves the key into the ignition.

"Dad said it was okay?" Sam asks incredulously, folding himself into the car and slamming the passenger's door shut.

"Left him a note," Dean says, glaring at the meter.

"_Really_?"

He doesn't look at Sam, but he can hear the surprised pleasure in his voice.

Dean grunts in affirmation. He takes them out of park, reversing carefully down the incline and trying to ignore the sound of gravel fucking up his baby's undercarriage.

_I__'__m gonna to regret this_, he thinks, even as he turns her off onto the highway.

"It's going to be fine, Dean," Sam says, sensing his thoughts. "You're probably right. I'm sure Dad's not going to take off just because we took our eyes off of him for a day or so."

Dean snorts, finally glancing over at his brother.

"Yeah, say that again and try to sound like you mean it."

Sam at least has the grace to look shamefaced.

"Well, I'm still glad you decided to come," Sam says quietly, after a moment, and Dean knows what he really means is, _"I__'__m glad you__'__re choosing me."_

"Best lead we got," Dean says, eyes straining against the glare of the setting sun. "Like you said."

This isn't him picking sides, no matter what Sam thinks. All three Winchesters are batting for the same team here, and the sooner Sam and Dad remember that the better. It's just that, right now, Dean's backing Sam's play. Simple as that.

He reaches under his seat and digs around in his box of tapes, picking one out at random. He thumbs it into the cassette player, just lets it pick up wherever they left off last time, the drawling voice of the narrator upped to a half-assed falsetto as he does the dialogue between Catherine and Henry.

"'—_love you so and it__'__s been awful. You won__'__t go away?__'"_

"'_No. I__'__ll always come back.__'"_

Dean glances at Sam out of the corner of his eye - watches him flip through the pictures on his phone, eyes squinted against the dim glow, the tiniest hint of a smile playing on his lips - and shifts into fifth gear.

"_I thought she was probably a little crazy,_" the narrator drones on._ "It was all right if she was. I did not care what I was getting into."_

* * *

Author's Note: The referenced texts at the beginning of the chapter are "Dark Mirrors: Azazel and Satanael in Early Jewish Demonology" by Andrei A. Orlov, "A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels and Other Subversive Spirits" by Carol K. Mack & Dinah Mack, and "Summa Theologica" by St. Thomas Aquinas. The book-on-tape Sam and Dean are listening to at the end is "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway.


	9. Chapter 9

Thanks for reading, everyone! Enjoy the chapter.

* * *

Dean's driving outpaces Sam's predictions. By the time they're closing in on Ellen Harvelle's place, the sun is only just starting to peek over the horizon, turning the sky to pink and orange and casting long, dark shadows over the scrubby plains and scattered farm houses.

Dean turns off I-80 at the outskirts of Omaha, ignoring the sleepy grumbles from the passenger's seat in favor of pulling his baby into the ghost-town parking lot of an IHOP.

He puts in their order with the tired-eye redhead working the booths while Sam goes to the bathroom, and when his brother slides back into the booth across from Dean, his face is still shadowed with frustration, all grim and grumpy from two sleepless nights in a row. Dean snorts at his expression and pushes Sam's cup of joe closer as a peace offering.

"The woman runs a bar, Sam," he says easily. "You think she's gonna take to getting dragged out of bed this early? Hell, Bobby already said she's cranky."

"S'not what he said," Sam half-yawns, stirring Sweet'N Low into his coffee.

Dean takes a long swig of his own coffee, lets the feel of it sizzling off the layer of skin on the roof of his mouth get his brain kick-started.

"Okay, if Bobby describes anyone as 'a hell of a woman,' I'm betting she's basically him in a wig. You wanna wake chick-Bobby up at the crack of dawn, be my guest, but I get your sweet phone and comfy hoodie after she shoots you."

Sam rolls his eyes so hard Dean thinks he hears something rattling around in there.

"Admit it, Dean. You just wanted pancakes."

"Hell yeah, I wanted pancakes," Dean tells him cheerfully. "Just because you hate food doesn't mean the rest of us have to."

Sam scoffs.

"This stuff isn't food. It's a coronary bypass on a plate."

Their waitress comes back with their orders before Dean can fully educate his brother about the wonders of a restaurant devoted entirely to sugary, trans-fat loaded breakfast foods. She deposits Dean's giant combo platter of bacon, eggs, sausage links, and French toast next to his stack of chocolate chip pancakes before adding Sam's tiny Kids Meal plate like an afterthought.

Sam scowls down at the smiley face pancake and then back at Dean, who just grins at him, mouth already stuffed full of sausage.

"Real mature, Dean."

"Come on, Sam," Dean needles. "You love it. Just look how happy it is to see you!"

Sam huffs and starts eating off the banana slices that make up the pancake's smile in retaliation. Dean watches him fondly.

"So," Sam says oh-so-casually, once he's started in on the blueberry eyes. "Heard anything from Dad?"

Dean spears a strip of bacon.

"Nope."

Sam furrows his brow, gently tipping syrup over his pancake in the shape of a triangle. Guess he doesn't know what to think of that either.

"You decoded all that research yet?" Dean asks, changing the subject.

Sam grimaces.

"Not yet," he says. "Not all of it. It reads like eight kinds of crazy and it's all jumbled up and half of it's in code…"

He sighs. Dean shrugs, unconcerned.

"You'll figure it out."

Sam is still frowning down at his pancake, fork poised in the air, so Dean dumps a fried egg onto his plate and kicks him in the shin.

"Eat," he orders. "If this lady is anything like I'm picturing, you're gonna need the energy."

Harvelle's Roadhouse is a dirty, tin-roofed dive located just off a stretch of interstate that's biggest selling point is that if you keep on driving you'll eventually hit Lincoln. The unpaved parking lot is completely empty, save for an ancient payphone, a self-serve gas pump, and a thin layer of detritus made up mainly of cigarette butts and empty beer bottles. There's a jumble of mismatched chairs, barrels, and wooden crates spilling out onto the dusty front porch. Dean imagines the place gets pretty packed come nighttime, but right now it's as still and quiet as the overgrown lots that surround it on all sides.

"Aw yeah," Dean says, throwing the Impala into park. "Now _this_place looks like a good time."

Sam snorts.

"Redneck," he accuses playfully.

He steps out into the parking lot, kicking an empty gas can out of his path, and they walk together toward the door. It's locked up tight, so Sam knocks a couple of times. They both wait, listening for any sounds of movement, but there's no answer.

Dean tries to see inside, but the windows are all blocked by rusted grating and dingy lace drapes. He shoulders his brother out of the way and gives 'er another try, pounding on the door with the side of his fist and hollering a little for good measure.

"Hello? Anybody home?"

Still no response.

"I'm gonna try the back," Dean says. "You keep knockin'."

Sam nods.

"Okay. Be careful."

Dean makes a face at him before he rounds the corner. He walks past the old RV that's parked up against the side of the building, its roof half-covered by a battered blue tarp and haphazardly stacked tires. There's an old blue and white Ford pickup parked in the back, and Dean notices that the ground back here is littered not just with trash and cigarette butts but with spent shells, too. He casts his eyes around and spots a couple of weathered shooting targets at the tail end of the lot, a few yards away from a battered wooden shed.

Dean raps on the peeling back door, waits a couple seconds, and when he doesn't get a response, jiggles the handle. He glances around at the empty yard before digging his lock pick kit out of his jacket and crouching down to jimmy the door open. He's almost got a lock on it when he feels something solid press against his back. He freezes.

"Stand up," a young, female voice barks from behind him. "Hands on your head."

Dean grins ruefully.

"Listen, miss, I know how this looks—"

He hears the sound of the shotgun cocking.

"I said get up."

"All right, all right," he says, standing slowly. "But just so you know, you really shouldn't put a gun right up against someone's back like that, 'cause it's real easy to—"

He turns quickly, yanking the firearm out of her hands.

"To do that," he finishes, smirking as he pumps the gun again, ejecting the round.

He barely gets the comment out before she punches him in the face with all of her might, yanking the shotgun out of his hands.

"Ow, god_dammit_!" Dean gasps, blood pouring down his face from where the blow has broken his sutures. "Sam! Could use some help here!"

The back door swings open, and an older woman blinks down at him. Sam pokes his head out over her shoulder, eyes going wide when he sees Dean bent over, clutching at his face.

"Shit," he swears, darting over to Dean's side and pressing his shirt sleeve against the wound. He glowers at the blonde girl, who looks surprised but unapologetic.

"You must be Dean," the woman says, grinning. "Hi, I'm Ellen. See you already met my daughter. Jo, these are John Winchester's boys."

The girl – Jo – nods in greeting.

"Hey," she says.

Dean squints up at her in disbelief.

"_Hey_," he says with a big, sarcastic grin.

Sam puffs out an annoyed breath.

"Ellen, do you have any dental floss I can borrow?"

* * *

Ellen, as it turns out, has hospital quality suturing on standby and graciously lets Dean pound back a free shot of whisky while Sam stitches him up at the bar.

She's polishing glasses now, eyeing Sam's stitch work like she's ready to smack his hands away and do it herself if he so much as twitches. She'd tossed Jo a washcloth and told her to get to work cleaning the tables. Dean's been keeping tabs on her out of the corner of his eye, and as far as he can tell, she's been polishing the same spot on the table closest to the bar for the last ten minutes. The third or fourth time he glances over, she catches him looking and cocks her head to the side, blonde hair swinging, then gives him a wide, smarmy smile.

Honestly, Dean would probably enjoy that level of callousness if it wasn't his face that got punched.

"Jesus, Dean, what were you thinking?" Sam chides him, snipping off the last stitch and carefully mopping up the blood that's spattered down his face. "I told you to be careful."

Dean sputters indignantly.

"Wow, Sam, way to blame the victim," he says. "Have some pity, man."

Sam scoffs. He'd been subtle enough about it, but Dean could tell he was righteously pissed at Jo up until Dean explained that he'd been doing a pretty good impression of some jackass trying to pull a B&E on a hunter's bar. Now, of course, Sam's just channeling his concern into being a little bitch while he pokes at Dean's face.

"Alright," Ellen breaks in, setting aside the glass she's been working on and leaning her elbows against the bar. "Well, now that's all cleared up. I'm assumin' you're here 'cause you need my help. Your daddy closin' in on that demon?"

They both start, glancing at each other in surprise.

"You know about the demon?" Dean demands.

Ellen's eyebrows draw together as she looks between them.

"Well, that's why John sent you, isn't it?"

Jo turns slightly, looking at them curiously from behind the curtain of her hair.

"He didn't… send us, exactly," Sam says awkwardly.

Ellen straightens up.

"Is he's alright?" she asks, like she's afraid to hear the answer.

Dean clears his throat.

"He's fine," he says. "We came on our own, is all. Heard about you from Bobby Singer."

"That so?" Ellen says crossly. "Well, of course. Figured John'd finally decided to stop being a stubborn ass, but looks like that was just wishful thinkin'."

"You're the one who called me the other day, right?" Dean asks. "Trying to get in touch with him?"

"That's right," she says. "Figured you wouldn't remember me from way back when, but... Well, you know how bad the man is about picking up his phone."

"Yeah," Sam exhales with a grimace. "We do."

"Must've left him a half-dozen messages since he dropped off the grid offering to give him a hand. After he called me the other day, I thought maybe he was coming around," she shakes her head, mouth working. "Well then, if this isn't about the demon, what is it about?"

"Actually," Dean says. "It sort of is about that, um…"

He coughs and casts Sam a 'help me out here' look. Sam sighs, puts on his most sympathetic puppy dog face and starts explaining about the gun.

"I know Daniel Elkins," Ellen confirms once they've reached that part of the story. "Haven't seen him in years, though. Not since before Bill—"

She cuts herself off, picking up another glass to scrub.

"Anyway, I don't know where he got to."

"Well, that's just it," Sam says gently. "Bobby thinks maybe your husband might have. Maybe he wrote it down somewhere?"

"So you wanna look through his things," Ellen finishes, face unreadable.

"No way," Jo breaks it, standing up ramrod straight, pretty face like a storm cloud. "Not a chance."

"Listen, I get how you feel," Dean tells her, turning on his barstool. And he does. He really, really does. If a pair of hunters showed up wanting to look through Mom's stuff, he'd be throwing punches before they even got the words out. "But we've got to get our hands on this gun. This is important. It's—"

"You don't even know the address is in there," Jo points out. "Even if it is, it's been _years_. That Elkins guy could've moved a dozen times since then."

"It'd still be better than what we got," Dean tosses back. "This is—"

Ellen slaps a hand down the counter with a _clink_. She pulls back, leaving a key on the table by Dean's elbow.

"If Bill had anything on Elkins, it'd be in that old RV out there," she jerks her head toward the wall behind her. "You boys have a look around, see if you can find his journal."

"Mom," Jo says tightly.

"Joanna Beth, we are not having this conversation," Ellen cuts her off. "You let these boys do their job."

Jo frowns deeply, narrowed eyes trained on the floor.

Sam reaches out and takes the keys gently.

"Thank you. We really appreciate it."

Ellen clears her throat, her expression shuttered.

"Just… be careful in there. Nobody's been in that wreck in ten years."

She turns away and grabs a stack of dirty trays before walking into the kitchen, door swinging behind her with finality. Dean gets the message loud and clear: Dismissed.

He hops down off the chair and tilts his head towards the door, eyebrows raised. Sam nods.

"Hey, wait," Jo says, slapping her washcloth down on the table. "If you're going in there, I'm coming with you."

"You don't have to do that," Sam says.

Jo raises an eyebrow in an expression that screams _"Just you try to fucking stop me."_

"Lead on," Dean says, sweeping his hand out in invitation.

Jo twirls on her heel and strides briskly out of the Roadhouse. Dean follows after her, face threatening to split into a grin. He watches her round backside swing from side to side.

Man, he could really learn to like this girl.


	10. Chapter 10

Thanks again to all of our wonderful reviewers! We read and appreciate every bit of feedback! Hope you all enjoy this new chapter. And if you do, please drop us a note and let us know!

* * *

Bill Harvelle's RV is parked with the door leading into the living area pressed up against the wall. Jo sticks her hand out for the key, unlocks the driver's side door, and yanks it open with a rusty shriek. She throws a slim leg up, grabs hold of the steering wheel, and pulls herself inside. They watch her clamor over the driver's seat and into the back, and then Dean meets Sam's gaze with a little half smile, shrugs a shoulder, and plants a boot on the floorboard to follow her.

Sam resists the urge to pull a face. He's not blind to the appreciative looks Dean's been tossing Jo's way. His brother never did know when to keep it in his pants. Honestly, Sam will consider himself lucky if Dean sticks to just looking. He doesn't exactly relish the idea of Ellen Harvelle chasing them off the property with a shotgun, especially when they haven't even gotten a lead on the Colt yet.

The RV creaks and rocks when Sam scoots over the center console to step heavily into the cabin. The inside is musty and dim, a time capsule done up in gray paisley and pine. The faint, pungent smell of mildew twinges in Sam's nose, the remnant of storms battering the RV over the past ten years from the looks of it. Shattered glass crunches underneath Sam's hunting boots, sprinkled liberally over the table and bench seats. The windows on the wall facing the outside are all taped up with plastic sheeting.

Sam's intimately aware of Jo's eyes boring holes into the side of his head from her spot against the opposite wall, so he tries to look as respectful as possible as he scavenges through her dad's stuff for anything useful.

He notices a map of Pasadena pinned up on the wall behind the table, along with a few news clippings about disappearances and wild dog attacks in the area. There's a jumble of papers littering the table, spilling down across the seats and scattering onto the dingy floral kitchen rugs that line the hallway. Sam sweeps as much glass away as he can with his sleeve and starts picking through them.

It's mostly more of the same: A couple of ten year old newspapers made almost unreadable by water damage, another map with Devil's Gate Reservoir circled in Sharpie, along with a handful of bills and a shopping list of hunting supplies that have all been crossed out. Sam shuffles the papers and puts them back on the table in neat stacks.

He pulls open the cabinets but doesn't find anything except dead bugs, a couple of rolls of toilet paper, a case of extremely expired PBR, and what looks like a lifetime supply of beef jerky.

Dean's still in the back going through the bedroom drawers, and another scan of the RV doesn't turn up anything large enough to hide a journal, except maybe the cabinets under the sink in the tiny kitchenette. Jo's wandered over there, now, her hands gripping her elbows, expression unreadable. Sam goes to stand beside her.

She's staring at a handful of old snapshots taped up to the wall. There's a wallet sized photo of Ellen standing outside a shined-up version of the Roadhouse, arms crossed over her chest, her scowl belied by the twinkle of her eyes and the slight quirk at the corner of her mouth. Next to it is a picture of Jo as a little girl in overalls and braids, holding up a fish on a hook next to the beaming face of the man Sam assumes must have been Bill Harvelle. Another photo depicts a slightly older Jo standing beside the road and smiling widely, thumbs tucked into the straps of her Lisa Frank backpack.

Jo reaches out and lightly touches the photo in the center, an old polaroid of a very young, very pregnant Ellen standing up on her tiptoes next to the RV to kiss her husband through the window.

"Mom always hated this thing," she says with a faint smile. "She must have tried a million times to get him to sell it once they moved into the Roadhouse. Pretty sure he just took it on hunts to prove her wrong when she said it was a waste of space."

She gives a sad little laugh, arm dropping back to her side.

"I'm sorry," Sam says softly. "I know it can't be easy having us remind you of all this."

"It's okay," Jo tells him, shrugging one shoulder. "It was a long time ago."

It's not okay, not really. Not at all, and Sam knows it. He knows what it sounds like to swallow down grief, knows what it looks like to when someone's trying to push it away, trying to force it down, and it just won't _go_.

"Do you mind if I ask what happened?"

Jo blows a long breath out of her nose.

"Hunt gone wrong," she says, voice taking on a twinge of bitterness. "That's about all I know for sure. Some other hunter brought back the RV for us and Mom just… left it where he parked it. Never touched it. Never wanted to talk about what happened. Didn't even want to talk about _Dad_."

She swallows thickly, fists forming at her sides.

"I think the thing that did it is dead," she says tightly, "but I don't _know_. And I don't know how he died or why. I'll probably _never_ know."

Sam nods slowly.

"I think I know how you feel."

"Do you?" Jo asks tersely.

Sam turns to look at her fully and nods again.

"The demon we're hunting killed my mom," he tells her. "I was just a baby. When I was growing up, my dad and my brother never wanted to talk about her either."

Jo stares at him with her eyebrows drawn together, fists unfurling. In the bedroom, Dean fumbling has gone quiet, and Sam shoves away the thought that he's listening in.

"That was their way of dealing with it. I get that now," he continues. "But I think not talking about it made it worse, because then it was like she was just _gone_. There was this big empty space in our lives where she used to be, but we couldn't acknowledge it. Couldn't deal with it. When I was a kid, I used to think all kinds of stuff, like maybe they didn't want me to talk about her because it was _my_ fault she wasn't around."

He has to shut his eyes against a sudden surge of emotion, takes a second before continuing.

"I thought not knowing was worse than _anything_," he says. "But I was wrong. The worst thing is knowing what happened to my mom, knowing that it's _still_ happening, and not being about to do a damn thing to stop it."

Jo is silent for a long moment.

"Wait here," she says, smacking a palm against the cracked linoleum.

She walks past him and climbs out of the RV. Sam watches her trudge across the yard towards the tool shed through the back window.

Dean turns from where he, too, is watching the window to look at Sam, brow furrowed.

"Bupkis in here," he gravels, holding up a pack of cigars he'd fished from under the mattress before tossing it onto the bedside table. "You find anything?"

"Maybe," Sam says distractedly.

Dean doesn't push him on it. Sam's brother is a smart guy. He's probably thought of the same possibility Sam has.

"Hey, Sam," Dean says instead, back turned as he pushes things back into the drawers at the base of the bed. "What you said just now? About Mom? I didn't—"

"I know, Dean," Sam cuts him off. "It's fine."

"I mean, it's just… I couldn't…" Dean trails off. Sam can hear the frown in this voice. "But I never wanted you to feel like it was your fault she wasn't around."

_But it was,_ Sam thinks. _We both know it was._

Before either of them has to say it, Jo is back, holding a book tightly to her chest. She sets it down on the counter in front of Sam, then steps back quickly like she's afraid she's going to change her mind. It's a thick leather journal with the initials W.A.H. carved into the cover.

"Don't tell my mom, but the truth is I broke in here years ago," she tells them. "Took this and a couple of other things. If you think you can use it… then use it."

"Are you sure?" Sam asks, hand hovering over the journal.

"Yeah," Jo exhales, "I'm sure. I mean, I'd give anything to take a shot at the thing that killed my dad, but I don't have that option. You guys do. And if Dad were… I know he would've wanted me to help you."

"Thank you," Sam says sincerely.

He tucks the book under his arm and can't help the smile that spreads itself across his face.

For the first time in a while, it seems like things are finally going their way again.

* * *

Ellen's done cleaning the bar by the time they get back in. It doesn't really look any less dirty now than it did in the first place, but Dean's known enough hunters to figure it's sort of a 'pearls before swine' situation. She doesn't do much more than nod in acknowledgement when she sees the journal in Sam's hands before telling Jo that she's heading up to their apartment.

"Well?" she prompts sharply, halfway through the kitchen door. "You two comin' or not?"

"Yes, ma'am," Dean responds automatically, falling into formation behind her.

The entrance to the apartment is tucked away behind a metal door in one corner of the kitchen. The door is padlocked shut from the outside and made of pure iron. When Ellen swings it shut again, Dean notices that the inside has been spray-painted with an impressive orgy of protective sigils.

No wonder Bobby likes this lady so much.

It's a short walk up a flight of wooden stairs to another door that sits at the top of the stairs, this one deceptively normal looking, painted white and inlaid with a set of curtained windows. Ellen unlocks it too, ushering them inside.

The Harvelle's home is small but neat and clean as a goddamn whistle. They step from the doorway into a living room that's decorated with burgundy carpet and tan-colored lattice wallpaper. Dean notes the lacey drapes on the windows and the square of white, lace-trimmed tablecloth laid sideways on the mahogany coffee table in the center of the room. Everything smells faintly like roses, and Dean narrows down the source to a bowl of pink potpourri sitting on top of the ancient television set. Ellen orders them to sit down on the white, claw-footed couch and disappears into the kitchen to grab them a couple of beers, and Dean and Sam share an incredulous look.

Apparently Ellen Harvelle has a Susie Homemaker side. Who'd have thought?

The first thing Dean notices once Sam cracks it open is that Bill Harvelle's journal is roughly a thousand times better organized than Dad's. It doesn't take long before they notice a faded, pencil smudged list of names and numbers stretching from the inside cover through the first three pages. They're indexed by state, and Dean's seriously concerned that Sam's going to piss himself with happiness. It's exactly how Sam would lay it out, and Dean knows that for sure because Sam's got a similar address book running in the back of their own hunting journal.

"Sorry, boys, Dan Elkins ditched that phone years ago," Ellen says, setting their beers down on the table before leaning over Sam's shoulder to get a look at the page he's pointing to. "Keep lookin' though. After a while, Bill just got tired of changing the numbers every damn month."

"Told you," Dean tells his brother under his breath.

Sam huffs and ignores him.

Dean lets Sam take the lead on digging around for Elkins' location. If anyone's going to be able to find a tiny detail like that mixed in with all of these accounts of chupacabras and werewolves, it'll be Sam. His brother devours the pages, a wrinkle of concentration between his brows, silence punctuated with those familiar, dorky little "huh" noises that mean he's found something particularly interesting. Dean cranes his neck to get a look at the pages over Sam's shoulder. Even he has to admit, Bill Harvelle's journal is a pretty good read, even if his drawings look like something Sammy would've done when he was five. And considering Sam's about as talented at art as he is at holding a tune or picking a radio station that doesn't make Dean want to hang himself, that's saying something.

But after forty-five minutes of searching, even Sam seems to be questioning whether they're going to find anything, and he's stopped reading the details in favor of flicking through the pages with ruthless efficiency, scanning each in turn for a mention of Elkins before moving swiftly on.

Dean sighs and cracks his jaw befor standing up, waggling his empty beer bottle at Sam and Ellen as an explanation before he wanders into the kitchen.

Jo's in there now, rummaging through the fridge. Dean eyes her appreciatively, taking in the long line of her spine where her tank top's gotten rucked up to settle at the dip of her waist.

"Can I help you?" Jo asks flatly without sparing a look back.

"Yeah, grab me a beer, would you?"

There's a half-second pause and then Jo tugs open the vegetable drawer, standing up to toss Dean a bottle of Bud and elbow the fridge door closed. She twists the cap off a bottle of Coke and leans against the counter, taking a long swig regarding Dean with inscrutable eyes.

"So," she says. "How's your face?"

"Fine," Dean lies easily. "How's your fist?"

"Never better," Jo tells him, grinning blithely.

She's a firecracker, all right. Dean can't decide if he finds that annoying or sexy as hell. Probably a little of both, if he has to be honest. He pops the cap on his beer and takes a swig.

"Looks like Sam's gonna take a while," he says, nodding his head toward the living room. "You wanna grab some lunch? Maybe show me what you do for fun 'round this place?"

"Not a lot of what you'd call 'fun' around here," she says, expression equal parts amused and incredulous. "Assuming you're not talking about shooting cans out back."

"Well, we could always make our own fun," Dean suggest with a half-grin.

Jo huffs out a laugh like it's been punched out of her, eyebrows shooting all the way up to her hairline.

"_Please_ tell me nobody's ever fallen for that line."

"You'd be surprised," Dean replies, unstung by the rejection.

"Ever try it on someone you didn't put three shots of tequila in first?"

Dean gives her the non-verbal equivalent of _"Fair enough."_

"Lunch is still on offer, though," he tells her.

"Yeah, I'm gonna pass," Jo smirks, shaking her head. "Better luck next time, sailor."

"Can't blame a guy for trying," Dean says with an easy shrug.

It's probably for the best, anyway. Sure, there might be something there, but the timing's all wrong, for both of them. Anyway, the last thing he wants to do is give Ellen Harvelle a reason to pump his ass full of buckshot.

She'd do it, too. Doesn't matter how many lace doilies the woman owns, she'd take him apart in a second.

"Hey, Dean!" Sam calls, interrupting his train of thought. "Get in here!"

Dean puts the beer down with a click and hoofs it into the living room, Jo at his heels.

"Find something?" he asks, even though it's obvious from the manic gleam in his brother's eyes that he has.

"'December 8th, 1995,'" Sam reads. "'Daniel called and asked me to look into a case in a town in Utah called Enoch. He was afraid it was vamps, but it turned out to just be a couple of ghouls who'd gotten creative. Stopped in to see him on the way back home, but he didn't want anything to do with me right then. Told me he didn't want me coming around and leading vamps to his location. Guess I'll have to add Manning to the list of cities I've been kicked out of. If I keep up this rate over the next twenty years, I might actually catch up to John.'"

Sam gives Dean a victorious look.

"It's not an address or a phone number, but it's a start," he says. "I'll keep reading and see if I can find more but…"

"It's a lead," Dean smiles. "Good job, Sammy."

Even with just a name and a town, Dean has no doubt they can track the old man down. They've done a lot more with a lot less. And even if Elkins _can__'__t_ tell them anything useful about the gun, it's still a huge relief to find that they haven't made this little side trip for nothing. When they get back and eventually have to answer to Dad, that's gonna be a big point in their favor. Dean claps a hand on Sam's shoulder, and the kid takes practically beams up at him before turning back to the journal.

"Well, alright. Glad you found something, at least," Ellen says, making her way into the kitchen.

Dean crosses over to sidle up to Jo again. He may not be cruising for a hook-up, but a little shameless flirting never hurt anyone. He gives her a wink, and she shakes her head, mouth quirking into a smile against her will.

"I gotta run to the store to pick up some stuff for the bar," Ellen calls from the next room. "Want me to pick up something to eat while I'm out?"

"You really don't have to do that," Sam tells her before Dean can get a word in. "We're fine."

Ellen pokes her head out of the doorway and fixes him with a stern look.

"You boys look like you've been chewed up and spit out. You think I'm gonna starve you on top of that, you've got another think comin'."

"Ignore Sam," Dean tells her. "He's always tryin' to watch his girlish figure. Know anywhere that makes a decent salad?"

"Not through personal experience," Ellen replies, "but I think I can scrounge something up."

"Great. He'll get that," Dean announces, ignoring the death glare Sam's aiming at the side of his head. "I'll have whatever you're having."

"Jo?"

"Just get me the usual," her daughter answers.

Ellen nods, turns grab her keys off the rack, and then there's a deafening _bam_ as the Harvelle's front door explodes inward, and suddenly John Winchester is standing in the living room, his face like a thundercloud, his gun drawn and pointed right at the center of the room.

Right at Sam.


End file.
